


slow disco

by laedymoonarchive



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:29:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26264230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laedymoonarchive/pseuds/laedymoonarchive
Summary: --- this is a repost of a fic originally published on my tumblr. i no longer use it and am slowly getting rid of my posts, so everything i've written is being archived here ---plot: after a summer spent in italy falling in love with a delicately voiced, curley haired guitarist, you’ve finally convinced yourself to put brian may behind you. that is, until he turns up at your college - and he’s not unaccompanied.warnings: light, light smut and angst, fluffy romance, swearing & alcoholwordcount: 2k
Relationships: Brian May & Reader, Brian May/You
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> \--- this is a repost of a fic originally published on my tumblr. i no longer use it and am slowly getting rid of my posts, so everything i've written is being archived here ---
> 
> plot: after a summer spent in italy falling in love with a delicately voiced, curley haired guitarist, you’ve finally convinced yourself to put brian may behind you. that is, until he turns up at your college - and he’s not unaccompanied.
> 
> warnings: light, light smut and angst, fluffy romance, swearing & alcohol
> 
> wordcount: 2k

the summer abroad between your last year of high school and your first year at uni often felt like a dream. not simply because it was amazingly beyond belief - though it was, but because the whole thing was shrouded in a kind of haze. your memories seemed like scenes from a movie - a movie starring someone else. sometimes you wondered if it had even happened.

if the eloquently spoken guitarist you’d met was purely a concoction of your imagination. or an angel - some kind of ethereal being sent to guide you through a holiday alone.

he’d caught your eye from the first - how could he not? six foot two of long legs sheathed daintily in velvet and rich mahogany curls coiling demurely in front of his eyes. you’d always had a bit of a thing for artistic types; pretty boys with long eyelashes and silver rings on their fingers and a penchant for oddly specific activism. and, shit, did brian may tick every box; all innocuous smiles and white painted fingernails and _save the bloody badgers_ pins on his jacket.

noticeably unaccompanied, you’d first seen him on your third night in the bar below your lodgings - which, for its low light and red-glass candles, was more like an intimate restaurant than the pubs you were used to back home.

his accent as he ordered a drink in a stilted mix of italian and english sounded, to you, like walking through the doors of your childhood home. it felt warm and safe and _easy_ to have a fellow brit around, after days of struggling to explain yourself to locals in your shitty italian.

“a fellow pommy?” you’d said, delighting is his warm tone as he’d replied.

“don’t tell me my italian isn’t as good i think it is?”

“oh, it’s beautiful. you’re a regular marcello mastroianni.”

he’d lent closer “i’ll take that as a hint at your fluency, then?”

“ha!” you shook your head. “ask the poor bartender - he’s been trying to figure out whether i’m asking for rosé or _rosso_ wine all week.”

“ah, a smart girl who makes jokes at her own expense.” he’d looked almost shy as he’d spoken. like he didn’t usually flirt with strangers, though you found that hard to believe for someone who looked like him.

“how do you know i’m smart?” you probably held the same expression. casual coquetry wasn’t usually your style, either.

“when girls make obscure references that i don’t understand, i tend to be intrigued.”

“you’re very easily impressed. i’ll remember to allude to european cinema more often.”

“bad habit, i’m afraid. if you tell me you watch french films without the subtitles, i might just have to buy you a drink.”

“i probably shouldn’t tell you what i’m studying next year, then.”

he threw his hands up. “lay it on me.”

“french literature.” you’d winced. you knew your read made you sound pretentious. “hope you’ve got a few pounds.”

_“shit.”_

_“je vais prendre un verre de champagne.”_

“i think champagne is extremely appropriate. that is what you asked for, right love?”

you’d nodded with a slight smile, though your stomach was somersaulting. “and why’s bubbly so fitting?”

“well, i don’t know about you.” he said, leaning over the bar to request two glasses of moet. “but i don’t often find such eloquent conversation with girls i’ve just met.”

“no.” you’d murmured. “not to ruin this whole perfect strangers vibe we’ve got going, but i’d love to know your name.”

“brian.” he chuckled, clinking his glass to yours. “brian may.”

every night after that you’d spent extra minutes in front of the mirror, telling yourself that the low-cut silk blouses and smokey eyes weren’t for the benefit of dark, dishy brian may. and every night, he’d be waiting. readied with two drinks set on the bar in front of him and perplexingly good conversation to engage you with.

it was only a few days until the two of you decided to venture beyond your hostel together, exploring book shops and cafes and restaurants brian dug up from the back of the dusty guide book that he kept in his jacket pocket. conversations that started over aperol spritz only grew deeper over shelves of italo calvino and bottomless bowls of pasta - school, college, politics, music all making their rounds.

“zodiacal light”, he’d lectured you on. his eyes reflected the very stars he spoke of when he got going, fluctuating between profuse apologies for rambling and recitations of entire sections of his thesis.

you didn’t mind, not at all. “a beautiful man with beautiful hobbies”, you’d mused.

you knew you were just as bad, with all your grandiose opinions on french literature and _le mépris._

it was all fun with brian in the first week. you still felt like a couple of rowdy nineteen year olds fresh from sixth form, high on their new found freedom and the ability to drink without a fake id.

you thought you’d never feel more liberated, unfettered, euphoric than you did the nights you spent drunk, dancing through the cobble stoned streets back to your shitty hotel. it was more than worth the wait when brian’s arms finally, _finally_ encircled your waist, strong hands pressing you up against thousand year old archways and signs boasting the most authentic _pasta alla norma_ in sicily to pepper kisses across your chest.

“come back to my room.” you’d breathed after he kissed you for the first time.

“really?” _excited_. he’d looked so excited.

“if you want to.”

“ _only_ if you ask me in french.”

“me ramener à la maison et me baiser, brian may?”

“a translation?”

“take me home and fuck me, brian may.”

he’d blushed at that.

and god, was that the start of something. the fucks you had upon stumbling back into your room were epic - the kind that had you both starry eyed and sore for days afterwards.

it was always desperate with brian - lust fuelled, sloppy, but ineffably sweet.

going down on each other for hours underneath the covers on lazy sunday’s, when the cafes were closed and the sun soaked avenues too hot to walk. 

taking you on secluded beaches; leaving trails of sand in your hair and under your fingernails, only stopping when the waves began to lap at your feet.

cumming desperately against the sweaty sheets you’d been entangled in for hours, squeezing into the tiny claw foot bath together in an attempt to clean up.

drinking cocktails naked on the balcony in the evening and wearing each other’s clothes to venture out at night - exploring hole in the wall bars with brian’s favourite button up draped over your shoulders, your necklaces shimmering on his perpetually exposed chest.

after the first time you’d shared everything, from clothes to yourselves. there’d been little pretence between you and brian- why wouldn’t there be? with every physical aspect laid bare, it had seemed natural to expose yourself in other ways, too.

skipping around in deserted streets under the moonlight, feeling like the only two idiots in the world often warranted some good conversations - topics you hadn’t discussed over your numerous candle lit dinners.

“why’d you come here?” he asked you one night.

“sorry?”

“instead of hanging around the uk, i mean.”

“oh.” you hadn’t really known yourself. “just needed to be away for a bit, i guess. i feel like it’s been the same main streets filled with the same people having the same conversations for the past eighteen years of my life - and it’s about to be again for the next fifty.” 

god, was that what you really felt? it seemed to just come out without much thought. 

“just want to be able to remember something _different_.”

he’d nodded like he knew. but said nothing.

“and you?”

“had a shitty breakup. a bit of a shitty year on the whole, really. needed to distract myself.”

“‘distract myself’? you certainly know how to make a girl feel like a cheap rebound, bri.” you playfully twirled away from his grip.

“come back here.” he’d pulled you into his chest. “i came looking for a distraction. didn’t think i’d find something else.”

they were happy, paradisiacal, carefree days. but, as summer drew to a close, so did they. it was what you had agreed upon early on, after learning that your colleges may as well have been on the opposite ends of the country.

you’d let yourselves fall dangerously fast and recklessly hard under the pretence you could forget it when the expiration date was up. that it was nothing more than a summer romance, to be reminisced upon with fond smiles and nostalgic chuckles and then shut away in a box that you rarely opened.

that you were complete strangers before, and after that’s what you’d become again.

that you’d slip back into yourselves, your memories of each other fading into the monotony of your everyday lives.

but as you’d discovered, or rather been forced to admit, you couldn’t fall in and out of love on a timeline.

the last few days had been wired, charged, electric with a sense of desperation that _shit, this is really it._

you’d both been brooding then, though neither of you could say it, because really, what could you do about it? ironically, it was probably the only thing you didn’t talk to each other about, ignoring it, pushing it down, handling it in the worst possible way. but it had been there, watching from the corner of the room, growing darker and more nauseating with every second you and brian refused to acknowledge it.

the first time you’d mentioned it to brian was in a post-coital haze, still feeling the heady buzz of your orgasm and not quite aware of your words.

“brian?”

“yeah?”

“i don’t want to be finished with each other.”

“i’ll never be finished with you, y/n.”

fuck, did he have to be so sweet? did his shirt have to hang open to his delicately tanned navel? did the sheen of sweat across his chest have to make his collar bones glisten like that? did he have to keep blowing his softly coiled bangs out of his eyes? did he have to make himself so fucking hard to leave?

you hadn’t brought it up again after that, not even as he soberly walked with you to your train. hadn’t want to taint your last memory with tears and snot and your odd, hiccupey crying. you’d pretended not to notice the glassiness to brian’s eyes and did your best to it in your own.

“it’s been special.” he’d murmured.

“vous avez été spécial.”

“ _i’ve_ been special, have i?” he giggled. it had seemed that the french he’d been begging you to teach him after your saturday morning shags had begun to pay off.

“you have.”

he kissed you after that, for a long time. gripping your jaw and biting your lip, almost as if he was trying to keep hold of you in any way he could. but he couldn’t.

you’d sobbed the whole way back to paddington, much to the chagrin of the suited italian man shooting daggers at you over his pile of paperwork, and the amusement of a group of bitchy teenage girls.

they didn’t understand what you had left behind - perhaps no one would.

 _how could you possibly have loved him in three months? you barely knew him,_ you could hear from the lips of your mother, your friends. 

and so you kept him for yourself.

you neglected to inform anyone who asked. maintained your claims of solo status throughout the entire trip. “it got a little lonely, i suppose.” you’d recount, the pretence keeping you from moping over how much you missed. “but it was nice to be with myself for a bit.”

it was a secret you delighted in keeping.

a love story just for you.

and what could it possibly matter? you and brian may would most likely never, ever cross paths again.

—————


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: swearing, sexual innuendos, roger and y/n being general twelve year olds
> 
> wordcount: 2.5k

nine. shit, you were supposed to meet roger at nine. what’s it now? twenty past? you sit up in bed, palming at your eyes in an attempt to clear them so you can read the clock properly. nine oh seven.

“uh.” you groan, pulling yourself from the warm blanket you’ve cocooned yourself in. why did you agree to a before-class meeting? it had been roger’s idea - the bloke’s somehow always able to pull himself together after even the most wild of nights, able to run on about two hours of sleep.

for you, that’s not at all the case. you pull on a pair of jeans and an oversized blazer, its crumpled state a perfect match to your undereye circles and unbrushed hair. _at least_ , you tell yourself, slinging your bag over your shoulder and walking out the door, _on a college campus, no one will notice you looking a little dishevelled._

you make your way across the green and to your and roger’s elected meeting place - where you’re always able to find each other between or after classes. sure enough, the blonde’s already seated inside, bearing no evidence of last night’s antics aside from the peppering of fresh, purple hickies down his throat. _bastard_.

you drop into the seat beside roger with a sigh, and he pushes a coffee to you.

“rough night, then?” it could be a genuine inquiry, if it wasn’t for the shit eating grin plastered across his annoyingly well-rested face.

“oh, piss off.” you mumble.

“just concerned, love.”

“how are you so fucking chipper, then?”

roger chuckles and takes a sip of his tea. “practise.”

you roll your eyes in response, but really, that’s what you love about roger. he’s so very unflappable.

“well, i need something to wake me up. go on, tell me about her.”

“who?”

“this one.” you brush one of the bruises on roger’s neck with your painted fingernail. “she as good’a shag as she is territorial?”

roger sinks his head into his hands. “no. and don’t ask, because i’m not telling you.”

“c’mon rog. you know i’ve got to ask now.” you tug at his blonde locks.

roger lifts his head and pouts at you. “you’re going to laugh.”

“i won’t.” you assure him. lies, probably.

“fucks sake. she wanted to… no, i can’t tell you.”

“tell me, roger taylor,” you struggle to keep your face deadpan. “or i’m going to break into your dorm while you’re sleeping and cut off your pretty blonde hair.”

“no!” roger cries, his hands flying to his head.

“fine.” he mumbles when you’ve stopped giggling. “she tried to… tie me to her fucking headboard, are you happy?”

your eyebrows shoot upwards as roger’s cheeks flush crimson.

“ _christ_.” you laugh. “thought you were just going to tell me you slipped and dropped the yoghurt or something.”

“s’not fuckin’ funny.” he whines.

“it is, a bit.” you swipe a tear from your eye. “what did you do.”

roger scoffs a little. “i sort of… let her.”

well, you’re definitely awake now.

“really?”

“yeah. turns out there’s not a lot i won’t try.” he smirks with a degree of modesty, and you find it almost admirable.

“and?”

roger shakes his head. “not my thing.”

“well.” you whistle, sitting back and running your hands through your hair. “keep me updated, i suppose.”

“will do.”

another half an hour or so of roger enduring your ribbing and the two of you swatting at each other with your tea bags later, you’ve actually got to drag yourself to class.

“see you back here for lunch?” you say, shrugging your jacket onto your shoulders.

roger shakes his head. “‘ve got to meet someone.”

“who? dominatrix?”

“ha ha. very funny. no.”

“who?”

“guitarist kid.”

“i thought you’d tried every ‘ _half decent musician on this bloody campus._ ’”

“he’s new. and i only met him last night at the union bar.”

“i didn’t see him?”

“probably too busy having your hair held back.”

“fuck off.” you snort, and roger cracks a smile.

“seriously, though. i’ve got to go. think this one might work out.”

“sounds meant to be, rog.”

“let’s cross our fingers.” he smiles, winking sarcastically and shaking his intertwined digits at you.

——————-

your classes pass in drabbles of botching your french, swallowing a painkiller every now and then, and taking shitty notes that you know you’ll never be able to decipher come exam time.

in your last lecture, and despite your sloth-like movements throughout the rest of the day, you spring up immedietly when your stuffy professor finally shuts the fuck up about the comparative properties of two obscure (even for you) french films that aren’t even on the course list.

with any luck, you’ll get to the imperial union pub before roger does, and snag the stool at the bar that the two of you are constantly bickering over. it’s not even that good of a spot - the leather on the seat just as torn and shabby as all the rest. but you like how it’s close to the heater, roger likes that it provides a view of any girls at the other end, and the two of you are both problematically competitive. it didn’t take long to become a game. whoever arrives at the bar first gets the seat and a drink, courtesy of the loser.

when you walk into the place, it’s already buzzing, but your stool remains unoccupied by uni kids and cocky blondes alike. _fuck yes._

roger arrives not a minute after you’ve dropped into your seat, giving you a grimace as you smirk and ordering two old fashioneds before you’ve even had the chance to greet him.

“usually, i would care enough to not let you drink when you’re obviously still hungover.” he says, pushing the cocktail towards you.

“but?”

“but i’m a sore loser, so drink the whole fuckin’ bottle.”

you laugh and sip your drink. roger’s right, you suppose. more alcohol really isn’t what you need right now. _oh fucking well_.

“so? how was he?” you change the subject.

roger looks even more animated than usual, eyes bright, genuinely excited. “fucking incredible.”

“seriously?” you say incredulously. roger rarely awards people such high praise.

“yeah. i mean, i don’t want to sound up my own arse-”

“since when?” you scoff. roger nudges you in annoyance.

“but, i just reckon we’re on the same level. connected, you know. like, i’m not slowing down so he can keep up, he’s not showing off so much i can’t play any fills. it just fit. he’s a nice bloke, too. smart. studying astronomy or some shit.”

“that’s great rog. ‘m really happy for you.” you smile. you know how long roger’s been trying to find someone he can _really play_ with.

“thanks.” he says, a little gruffly. even in your almost-two years of friendship, roger’s still not quite become accustomed to your genuine affections.

“so what’s his name? your new boyfriend?”

“brian may.”

the words don’t quite register as roger speaks them. but you feel their weight. it’s as if you’re on a roller coaster that’s about to make it’s plummet back towards the ground - you can feel your stomach tightening, heart quickening, heat crackling on your skin - but the drop is yet to come. and then, it does.

“brian may?” you choke. brian fucking may. surely, surely it can’t be him. no, the universe isn’t that fucking cruel or virtuous or twisted. but he’s in your year, his read is astronomy, he’s a bloody _guitarist_. just like the long-legged brunette you’d left crying on a train platform not two years ago.

“yeah. do you know ‘im?” roger twirls his finger in his drink nonchalantly, as if you’re not internally screaming right before his eyes.

“i-no.”

roger leans back in his seat. “ah.”

“what?” you hate when he gets all pyscho-fuckin-analytical.

“you’ve shagged him.”

“i have not!”

“liar. your cheeks are all cute and blushy.” roger reaches to pinch at your face and you smack his hand away.

“piss off.”

“was he any good? actually, don’t tell me. don’t think i’ll be able to look at the bloke again if i know he’s a casanova shag.”

“put too much of a dent in that ego of yours, would it?” you say, annoyed into regaining a little composure.

“please, love. know i’m a better fuck than some lanky-legged guitarist.”

yep, that’s definitely your brian. well, not yours. _obviously_. fuck.

“so. you can’t have known our new best mate for long if you met him before college.”

“it was just after graduation.” the lie comes naturally to you. after all, you’ve been falsifying your tryst with brian since it happened. “it was nothing, really. just a drunken, first shag.” you do feel a little shitty, however, about lying to roger.

at least he’s none the wiser. “you’re a deflower-er then?” he jests.

“yes. yes i am.”

“well. i’m seeing the deflowered tomorrow. do you want to come? we could rekindle that virginal flame.”

roger’s proposition puts you at a crossroads. on one hand, you’ve put so much distance between yourself and brian may, between that whole summer. you’ve shrouded it in mystery and haze, even in your own mind. restrained the memories, almost. kept them from being able to cause you any pain. it’s the very reason you’d lied about it to roger. it’s _yours_. it’s _private_.

but, on the other, you’re just _so bloody curious_. the thought of seeing him again feels as if you’re to meet some fictional character. or a childhood imaginary friend. someone who doesn’t belong in the real, wide world. plus, now you’ve sold your story to roger, you’d better get brian up to date.

“i’ll come.” you decide. “but there’ll be no rekindling.”

roger smirks. “okay.”

“stop it,” you warn. “i’m serious.”

“i said, okay.”

——————-

for the second time in your life, you find yourself attempting to negate the obvious: that the extra effort you’re putting into your appearance isn’t for brian may’s benefit. you shouldn’t feel so guilty about it - isn’t it natural to want to look good when you see an ex? some kind of existential _fuck you?_

although, ex doesn’t seem to be quite the summation you would place upon your status with brian. he was never your boyfriend, you were never dating. you just _were_.

 _whatever you_ were _doesn’t matter. you’re not anything, now_. you remind yourself, dabbing a little of your favourite perfume on your wrists. _but do you want to be?_

it’s the question you’ve been asking yourself since your brain managed to segway from the land of hysteria into logical thought last night; do you want brian?

had you been asked two summers ago, back in sicily, with the ache of him still between your legs and his warm, heady scent impressed upon your skin, you would’ve said _yes, of bloody course_. but now, you’re not sure. you can’t imagine seeing brian, let alone talking to him, _being_ with him.

you can barely even picture the man anywhere but the cobble stoned streets outside of your hostel, dressed in anything but his billowy shirts and tiny shorts. he doesn’t belong at imperial, nor in the blazers and jeans and boots akin to its students.

it’s like when you’re on a holiday abroad, and suddenly, the thought of an essay you’ve got to write over the break pops into your head. it’s out of place. disjointed and disconnected. _your_ life, _your_ college, _your_ roger, they’re a trip to france, and brian may is an analysis of macbeth.

“are you ready love?” roger disrupts your train of deeply philosophical thought through your dorm door. “gonna be late!”

you yell a response and head for the door, giving your only nice pair of jeans a last, satisfactory glance in the mirror.

“christ.” roger whistles when you emerge into the hallway. “maybe i should just leave you two virgins to it.”

you hum appreciatively, fingering the frilled hem of your top. “thanks. and sod off, also.”

you follow rogers lead out of your accommodation building and across the green to the music rooms.

“are you nervous?” he bumps his shoulder to yours.

“why would i be?” _yes, loosely translated._

“dunno. but you’re doing your nervous thing. biting your lip.”

you release your bottom lip and run your tongue over the tender spot. “maybe a bit.”

“don’t be. can’t imagine he’d’ve been any less harmless two years ago then he seems now.” roger reassured you. “this is it, by the way.” you realise you’ve stopped, the doors in front of you adorned with signage labelling them rehearsal spaces and recording booths.

as he leads you down the passage, past all the decked out rooms more fitting to a studio exec than a dirt poor uni student, a thought occurs to you. “how are you allowed to use these rooms? you’re not a music read.”

“don’t remind me.” roger groans.

you prompt him with a raised brow, and his grimace quickly turns to a smirk. “turns out the student coordinator for timetabling’s not a half unattractive bird.” he runs a hand through his hair. “‘n it would seem she’s quite taken with me.”

you throw your head back with a breathy laugh. “is there anywhere in life those winsome charms of yours won’t get you?”

“i doubt it.” roger mutters, coming to a stop in front of a black door, a timetable taped to the front of it. your stomach jumps a little.

 _4.30-6.00: roger taylor_ , reads the highlighted slot, a heart scrawled after roger’s name in pink gel-pen.

“aw.” you pout.

“mm.” roger smiles darkly. “what were you saying about territorial?”

you furrow your brow. “wait, she’s not-“ you gesture to his bruised décolletage. “-is she?”

“one and the same.”

“jesus fucking christ.” you wheeze. roger adopts his habitual _it’s-not-fuckin-funny_ pout, but the firmly set frown turns up a little as you piss yourself. perhaps it’s a way of releasing your nervous every. perhaps it’s just _too fucking funny._

regardless, you’re laughing so hard that you don’t hear the few notes of melancholic guitar that drift under the door. you don’t notice the _pop_ of a lead leaving it’s socket, or the shuffling of feet towards the door. it’s only as you’re wiping tears from your eyes, ribs aching, head buzzing, that you pay mind to it swinging open in front of you.

and behind it, guitar slung over his broad shoulders, lips parted in slight amusement that turns to confusion as his eyes flick to you, looking as tall and dapper and _handsome_ as the day you last saw him, is brian.

-––––––––––––


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: swearing, smoking, alcohol, angst
> 
> wordcount: 3.1k

_the uncanny:_ defined by freud as something strangely familiar, rather than simply unknown. what reminds one of their own repressed impulses - makes one aware of the disturbing omnipotence of thought.

you’d never quite understood the concept when learning it as a convention of gothic literature in sixth form. but now, you get what the austrian fucker was on about.

 _the uncanny_. that’s what you feel as your eyes lock with the man before you. there’s a familiarity - of course there is. you know this person - you’ve met with every intricacy of him that there is. and yet, there’s an unsettling, almost ominous foreignness.

his face is the same but deeper, though you don’t know quite how. the slopes and curves are unchanged, but the expression beneath them is decidedly different. and you know, _you know_ , you’ve been standing at the door for too long without saying anything. but you simply can’t stop staring at him.

he’s a flurry of contradictions - pink lips framing a smile that’s sweet, yet reserved. delicately high cheekbones wreathed with surprisingly masculine sideburns. a sharp, aquiline nose softened by the pronounced curve of his cupid’s bow. your gaze on the ethereal fragility of his features seems almost invasive, as if they’re too precious for your eyes.

as you begin to flicker them away, he opens his mouth, the movement drawing you back. he finally breaks the silence, voice low and measured, with a simple statement of your name. there’s a slight intonation - perhaps fondness, perhaps surprise.

you clear your throat, mimicking his tone with a little more softness.

_“brian.”_

“i-shit.” brian takes a hand to twist at the end of his curls. “i didn’t know you.. _shit_.” he repeats, the dumbfounded nature of his tone giving way to an incredulous smile.

roger places a hand on your shoulder and you shudder slightly. you’d almost forgotten he was there. “i’ll give you two a second. gotta tune my drum kit.” he says with surprising tact, slipping past you and brian into the rehearsal studio.

brian steps closer as soon as he’s passed. “christ, is that really you?” he mutters.

you dip your head. “couldn’t quite believe it when roger told me he’d met you, either.” you curse the excitement in your voice.

_stop it. he’s not some unrequited crush you’re speaking to for the first time._

brian’s expression shifts at roger’s mention. “what did you tell him? about us.”

“just that we’d shagged once. is that okay?”

“mm. yeah, i don’t think i’d want to get into all that with him, either.” 

_all that._ the elephant in the room, you suppose. the one that you’re not sure whether or not you should address. _not here, not now,_ you decide, giving him a nod in response. brian returns you a look, one that you can’t quite place, and turns back to an impatiently-drum-stick-tapping roger.

he retakes his place beside his amp, tilting his hips so he can adjust his tuning pegs and volume nobs and all the shit he’d explained to you once upon a time, and you take the opportunity to look at him once again.

he’s like a sort of magnet to your eyes. every time you drag them away, force them to study anything else, they’re still painfully aware of his presence. so you let them indulge from your spot, perched on an old drum riser.

brian’s a little taller, though broader as well. he fills out his clothes better. his curls brush the tops of his shoulders instead of his sharp jawline. they’re bouncier, too. perhaps further recovered from their stint of being straightened.

_“why on earth would you straighten these?” you’d asked brian as you lay in his lap on the stretch of beach he’d discovered in the back of his dusty guide book, tugging on one of his curls. “they’re lovely.”_

_“wanted to fit in. no one had curly hair when we were younger.” brian unfolded his hair from your fingers and took them in his._

you expect the memory to make your heart ache, but it doesn’t. instead, it strains. you can feel it thick in your throat, in the pit of your stomach. the kind of sensation you get when you need to have a good, hard cry. bursting at the seams with emotion.

in a way, you hate that he can make you feel like that. because brian looks _good_. painfully so. and, combined with the soft smiles he keeps sending your way, the delicate intelligence in his voice, it answers your question. of course you want him.

he’s all you’ve wanted since you were nineteen, the longing ache you wouldn’t even let yourself consider. the bar that none of the college boys who chatted you up at the pub could measure up to. and now he’s here. 

perhaps you could proposition roger to wingman for you. or you could simply ask him out yourself. although, _“wanna get a drink”_ feels too casual for all the history you share, and getting a mate to do your dirty work too juvenile. there’s not quite a category you can place yourself and brian into, and as a result, you’ve no idea what would be a fitting seduction strategy. 

your musings are interrupted by a rap at the studio door, followed by it cracking tentatively open. “roger?” the voice comes, melodic and low from the entryway. 

roger abandons his drums mid-beat to greet the pretty brunette stepping into the room. “clem.” 

“clem?” brian mouths to you, and you return his confused expression. 

“brian, y/n, this is clementine.” roger presses a kiss to the girl’s jaw and holds up her hand. the two of them make a gorgeous couple. she’s as beautiful as him, all soft curls and dimples and freckles across her cheeks. “she does the timetabling here.” the addition comes with suggestive raise of his eyebrows. 

_shit_. you stifle a giggle. _clementine_ ; as angelic looking as her name sounds, is responsible for the myriad of marks on roger’s chest? 

_what a girl_ , you want to tell her. _more power to’er._

“hi.” she smiles warmly, shaking brian’s hand. 

“clementine.” brian muses. “pretty.” 

“ironic.” you snort under your breath. roger shoots you a glower of warning, but your comment goes unnoticed as clem joins you on the drum risers. you shuffle over to make room for her, returning her smile, making polite chit-chat and sharing a smoke while brian and roger bicker. 

“you brian’s girlfriend, then?” clem asks as she hands you the cigarette. 

you inhale a little to much at her question, coughing out a response. “no! no. i’m just roger’s mate. brian’s new here, actually.” 

“oh, is he? i thought i would’ve remembered seeing him around.”

“why’s that?” you take a keen puff and pass the cigarette back. 

“you know; the hair, the height, the handsomeness.” she waves it through the air, waggling her fingers. 

you murmur in agreement, eyes fixated on brian’s elegant, swift, ring-clad fingers plucking deftly at his guitar strings. “he is quite something.” 

————-

“should about do it.” roger stands up from his stool, arching his back and making his way over to you and clem’s perch. “you right, brian?”

“sure.” brian nods. ”tomorrow?”

“can we make it morning? ‘ve got to see a professor about an especially shitty essay after classes.” 

the question’s more directed to clementine than brian, and she nods. “take me for that drink and i’ll pencil you in whenever you like.” 

roger slips his drumsticks into his waistband and slings his arm around hers. “of course. have fun, children.” he calls, and after a series of rushed _goodbyes_ and _nice to meet yous_ from clementine, the door closes after the pair with a shudder.

brian approaches you tentatively, and that niggling, out of place feeling aches in your temples. his cautiousness unsettles you. shouldn’t you be running into each other’s arms or something? two lovers finally reunited and all that kind of bullshit.

“so.” he twists a coil around his ring finger. 

“so.”

“you wouldn’t um… wouldn’t like to go for a drink, would you?”

“sure.” it feels wrong, the distance. the waver in both of your voices. this shouldn’t feel so new. “i’d love to.” 

brian nods, runs a thumb over his bottom lip. “i’ve got a little packing up to do here. do you mind waiting?” 

“course not. ‘m used to it.” you gesture vaguely to roger’s drum kit, implying you’ve spent many an evening waiting for your friend to _hurry the fuck up_ so you can get to the bar already. 

brian nods appreciatively. “you two are close, then?” 

“me and rog?” you hum. “have been since first semester last year.” you watch intently as brian busies himself with packing away his guitar, winding leads around his long forearms, setting the neck carefully in the velvet of his case, flicking off amps and pedals with the toe of his boot.

“how’d you meet? i’m assuming there isn’t much crossover between dentistry and french lit.”

there’s that feeling again, heavy in your abdomen as he names what you’re studying. something he only knows because _he knows you_ , because you’re not just meeting for the first time. another reminder of your history, which you’re yet to acknowledge. 

“not much.” you force a smile. “we are both taking english lit as a minor, but i met him at the kensington market, actually. both eyed off the same embroidered coat.”

“oh? and who got it?”

“rog, naturally. charmed it out of me.” you relax a little again. talking about your best mate calms you almost as much as his presence. 

“he seems like a laugh.” 

“he’s a love, really. wouldn’t guess it with how much of a sarcastic wanker he is most of the time, i s’pose.” 

brian chuckles; a warm, familiar sound. “he’s a bloody good drummer too. the best i’ve ever come across.”

“he is good, isn’t he.” you smile, feeling a little like a proud mum. 

and it feels good. _easy_. natural, just as it did when you first met him. 

“i’m about done.” brian announces, flicking the gold clasps on his guitar case and wrapping his fingers around the handle. “you good to go?”

you nod, hopping off the risers and following him out the door. 

“imperial bar?” he says. you like the way he walks. long strides, leaning slightly into you, knuckles brushing yours. 

“doubt we’ll find anywhere else as lively this early. and cheap.” 

you make your way at a leisurely pace across the green, paying no mind to varying degrees of drunken students, becoming more and more disorderly as you approach the warm, heady glow of the pub. the conversation flows steadily, any lulls feeling comfortable rather than awkward. 

“here, love.” brian skirts his way around you, taking care not to let his guitar case hit you as he holds open the door. 

“thanks.” you blush at the name. 

you doubt there’s another uni bar that’d be as spirited as the imperial bar on a _monday fucking night_. it’s packed to the brim with students, filled with the _enchanting_ aroma of cigarette smoke and cheap spirits. brian hugs his guitar case to his chest. 

“bar?” he mouths. you nod, and begin maneuvering your way through the crowd, only to collide with a boy, dark hair meticulously groomed and shimmery, inky brown eyes envy-worthy. the beer perched precariously in his painted fingernails falls right towards your chest, soaking the front of your blouse and tumbling to the floor with a clink that goes unnoticed in the surrounding rowdiness. 

brian steadies you with a hand at your waist as you yelp and stumble back into him, pulling the dripping fabric from your skin. 

“god!” the boy exclaims, obviously a little tipsy. “terribly sorry, dear.”

something about the contrite earnesty in his dark eyes makes your annoyance dissipate a little. he’s not a tosser, you decide, just a clumsy drunk. “it’s okay.” you offer him a grim smile.

“no, shit, i’ve ruined your top. and it’s so pretty. right cunt, i am.” 

brian and yourself exchange amused glances at his slight slur. 

“really, mate. i’m okay. please, don’t let it ruin your night.” you insist. he seems satisfied with that, hurriedly giving you his dorm number so you can come and find him to demand payment, should you need to purchase a new blouse, before rejoining the group he was approaching when you collided. 

“you good?” brian chuckles once he’s left. 

“shutup.” you groan. you glance down at your top, cheeks flushing as you realise just how see-through the fabric’s become. you cross your arms over your chest. “should probably go and change, i suppose.”

brian furrows his brows. “we can do this tomorrow night if you’d like?”

you curse inwardly. you don’t want to have to cut your time with brian short. but the stench of cheap beer is as stuck to your skin as your shirt is, and really, you’d die for a shower. “probably for the best.” you agree reluctantly.

“about six, then?”

“sure.”

brian brings a hand to the nape of his neck. how are you supposed to say goodbye to him? a hug? kiss on the cheek? 

“it was um.. fuck, it’s incredible to see you.” he holds open his arm for you to step into. 

you readily press yourself to his chest. he’s as warm as ever, and he smells like musky cologne and lavender as he places a kiss on the top of your head. “you too bri.” 

—————

if you could’ve stopped thinking about brian may at any point over the last fifteen hours, you would have. shit, you’d tried everything to tear your thoughts away from his pretty smiles and delicate hands as you went to sleep last night, and yet every single one of your dreams brought him screaming back to your subconsciousness. 

it’s distracting, really. impractical. you can barely concentrate on your lecture, one which has been highlighted as being of utmost importance to your exam. thanks a fucking lot, brian. 

you don’t want to feel as strongly for him as you so clearly do. perhaps because of the uncertainty of the whole thing. if this were a movie, you’d probably be boarding your plane back to italy by now, deliriously happy with your hands sickeningly entwined. everything would be mind numbingly simple. fall in love, become separated by cruel circumstance, have some whimsical chance re-meeting and pick right up where you left off. 

real life is proving to be much more complicated. the lines are far blurrier. you feel like roger; unable to quite make out what’s going on in front of you. shame you can’t pop in some contacts and make everything clearer. 

speak of the devil, there he is. skulking along the back row of desks so as not to attract the attention of your professor, an old bloke who’s somewhat affectionately referred to as _cliffy_. his lateness is no doubt due to clementine, judging by his bruised lips and giddy expression. 

you shoot him eyebrows as he slips in next to you. he responds with a flirtatious bite of his lip, mouthing “i’ll tell you later” before you both turn your attention back to cliffy’s droning. 

just as your eyes start to droop at the monotonous tone, roger elbows you sharply. your first reaction is to reach for your pen, taking his jolt as a warning that your professor is eyeing you off. but his attention’s directed to some poor bastard in the front row, and roger’s sliding a piece of paper towards you. 

_no epic shags happening tonight_ , it reads in his surprisingly elegant script. he tugs it back towards himself before you can respond, adds another line, slides it back to you. _for you, at least._

you roll your eyes. _dickhead._ brian must’ve told him that the two of you were meeting.

 _why’s that?_ you add your own scrawl. 

roger bits his lip before adding another line. _brian’s got himself a girlfriend._

you’ve never thought words written on page could feel as much like a punch to the stomach as those do. some strange mix of nausea and windedness, making you want to keel over in your chair. 

you squeeze your eyes tight shut. _whoever’s writing your movie is a fucking sadist._

roger rubs your arm with his thumb, but you retreat from his grip. you’re an idiot. an actual fucking idiot. 

“y/n?” he whispers. 

“just fuck off, alright.” you know you’re being unfair to him, but you can’t help snapping. your head hurts. your eyes hurt. you don’t want it to feel it as much as you do. 

roger looks stung by your words. “what’s up yours? don’t shoot the bloody messenger.” 

“the messenger wasn’t exactly tactful, was he?” you don’t care that you’re hardly whispering anymore. you don’t care that it’s not roger’s fault.

“i don’t know what you’re on about. christ, i didn’t even know you liked the bloke that much.” people are definitely looking now. 

“of course i-” you cut yourself off. _breathe_. 

“i’m going.” you hiss through your teeth, avoiding your professor’s judgmental gaze and roger’s blazing sad-puppy eyes as you haphazardly gather your shit and push through the rows. 

once you’re outside the lecture theatre, you let it wash over you. 

_brian’s got a girlfriend._

_he’s not yours._

“god.” you mutter audibly, leaning your burning forehead against the cool stone wall. you hate him. you hate him for making you feel like you’ve got some giddy school girl crush on someone completely unattainable. you hate him for letting you think that you had a chance. you hate not being sure whether he’s even done anything wrong. you hate him for ruining the perfect, untouched picture you’d concocted of _brian may._

“y/n?” a tentative hand brushes your shoulder. 

_jesus christ, what is it about the men in your life and their impeccable timing?_

“brian.” 

“you alright?” he looks like he cares. sounds like he cares. 

fuck off. you want to tell him. take your pretty hair and your kind voice and just fuck. off. “why are you here?”

“i’ve got to go see someone about a t-a position. not too sure where i’m going actually. could you help me?” 

you’d like to say yes. you’d like to act like it doesn’t matter that he has a girlfriend until he _tells you he does_. but you can barely look at him without feeling like collapsing against the wall.

you clear your throat, hoping your words will come out more snarl than whimper. “ _why_? i’m not your fucking girlfriend.”

————–


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: swearing, smoking, alcohol, angst
> 
> wordcount: 4.2k

_should’ve told you. fuck, i’m a prick. i’m sorry_.

 _sorry_ was the predominant theme of brian’s rant. one you encouraged only with slight quirks of your eyebrows and an occasional hand at your temples, responded to with a definite _it’s fine, brian. don’t be sorry._

he was so apologetic, so ready to be _sorry_ , and yet, you’re still not convinced he even did anything wrong in the first place.

he’s not yours. that’s what you keep reminding yourself. and if he’s not, why shouldn’t he have a girlfriend? perhaps he should’ve told you earlier. perhaps he shouldn’t’ve kissed you on the top of your head like he always used to do. perhaps his voice shouldn’t have had that tone —dripping in suggestion— when he said it was “incredible” to see you. you shouldn’t’ve let your self get swept away in the fantasy of it all. that his coming to imperial was _fate_ and all the bullshit that went with it. perhaps there was even a part of you that wanted to believe it was deliberate. that he came to find you; even though you’d only told each other where abouts your uni’s were, not their names.

what’s really driving you up the wall is the sheer uncertainty of the thing. was brian purely being a gentleman; pleased to see someone he hasn’t in such a long time, or did he not tell you about his girlfriend for some other reason? you’ve been busying yourself with such debates for the two days since you found out. banging your head against a wall in attempt to block out the sadness that would otherwise fill it. because _brian has a girlfriend_.

“ugh.” your audible groan reverberates off the wall of your empty dorm room. usually you’d have roger to bounce such conundrums off. but if your lying about how you and brian met hadn’t already made that a non-option, your fight certainly would have.

it’s not like you a roger never have a go at each other; in fact, the two of you bicker and snap like two children shoved into the backseat of a car for too long on the regular.

but you’ve never been so vicious with so little reason. as much of a bitch, really.

“ _fucking wanker._ ” you curse yourself. you need to apologise.

luckily roger can always be found in one of four places. the music rooms, the shoddy little cafe on campus and his crack-den dorm are your first stops. the places he inhabits most often. but the rehearsal rooms are empty; safe for a couple of third-year music students dry humping against a double bass, roger’s favourite leather armchair in the cafe is uninhabited, and his dorm greets you only with the stench of bong water and boy-clothes. _lovely_.

you’ve got one more stop. his last place, where he goes when he’s especially cut up over something. the garden behind the arts building. slightly overgrown, hidden behind a sad looking weeping willow, and unbeknownst to most students, you and rog had discovered the spot in your first semester, during a particularly competitive game of drunken hide and seek.

when that nice girl in his biology class had a boyfriend. when he had a fight with his mum over the phone. when that guy at the bar tried to chat him up because he thought he was a chick — which, if you’re to be completely honest, you found kind of hilarious. all those times, you’d found him in the spot.

you lift a few tendrils of curling, green fauna out of your face gently, giving way to the quiet, serene little court.

it’s exactly the type of place you would’ve sworn fairies lived when you were small. mossy wraught iron benches, overgrown beds of daises, cherub statues and dried-up fountains dotted here and there.

and roger, of course.

he’s lying plank-style across one of the limestone benches. face down, arms dangling over either side, long blonde hair just brushing the ground below.

he must hear your footsteps along the pale-brick path, but he doesn’t look up.

“you should be careful.” you poke the side of roger’s jean-clad thigh gently when you reach him. “someone might sit on you.”

“and?”

you cock your head to the side. “would hurt.”

“s’alright.” he gives an exaggerated sniff. “my heart’s already broken.”

“oh? and who’d hurt a pretty little thing like you?”

“my best mate, actually.” his voice is muffled. spoken with his face half pressed into the stone.

“she sounds like a bitch.”

“a right cunt, in fact.”

you both laugh softly at that. roger pushes himself up to sit, making room for both of you to sit cross legged, facing each other. there’s a smudge of dirt on his cheek from where it was pressed against the bench. you brush it off with your thumb wordlessly, then drop your hand to his.

“i’m sorry.”

roger gives your thumb a squeeze. “it’s alright. probably wasn’t as tactful as i could’ve been.”

“not your fault.” you shake your head.

he hums, then cocks his blonde head suddenly. “but why were you so cut? you only met the bloke a few days ago.”

“i’d met him before that,” you say quietly, dropping your eyes from his to the irredentist snail-trail decorating the brick next to your foot.

“you said it was just a quick shag.”

 _god, just tell him. before you dig yourself deeper into this fucking hole_.

“it _was_ my first time, rog.” you find yourself muttering instead. it’d be smarter to tell roger now. it’d make you a better friend. but you _just can’t_ bring yourself to dredge it up.

“s’pose,” he mumbles. “you’ve just… don’t know. never been the type to get so quickly attached.”

“it was an emotional time.” you smile grimly.

“what?” roger flashes you the boyish grin you’ve missed the last couple of days. “on your rags?”

“wanker!” you faux-gasp and shove his chest. “piss off!”

“don’t get carried away love.” roger unfolds his long legs from underneath him, standing up and offering you his hand. “i still haven’t forgiven you quite yet.”

you quirk your eyebrows wickedly. “how can i make it up to you darling? get out my handcuffs?”

“fuck!” roger groans, throwing his head back and taking staggered steps. “i knew i never should’ve told you that. _knew_ it would come back to bite me in the arse.”

you snort, jogging a little bit ahead of roger so he won’t be able to give you a shove after your next comment. “it’ll have to beat clementine to it.”

——————

“are you sure you want to come?”

“yeah.”

“i don’t mind.”

“rog. i’m _fine_.”

roger nods, then goes back to toying with the drum key around his neck.

in all honesty, you’d probably prefer to skip out on tonight’s rehearsal. but it’s a special one, according to roger. the debut of some bloke he and brian’ve roped into singing for them in the past couple of days while you’ve been confined to your dorm room.

the sensible part of your brain tells you to stay home; don’t put yourself through seeing brian just yet, when it still hurts. but the other —the one you’ve really got to stop fucking listening to, aches to see him. and the part that’s a loyal friend to roger agrees. two against one isn’t a particularly fair fight.

“tell me more about the new recruit,” you call to roger, who’s migrated to the bathroom to finger-comb his golden strands before you’ve got to head off.

“what do you want to know?” his voice comes back echoed off the tiles.

“dunno,” you busy yourself with his shelves while you’re waiting. “where’d you find him?”

“he answered my desperate message board plea. and brian recognised him somehow. can’t quite remember.”

you thumb through his record collection. nothing especially new. the same worn and torn copies of led zeppelin, abbey road and morrison hotel you’ve listened to time and time again. “but he’s decent?”

“better then,” comes the echoed scoff.

his room’s starting to show traces of girl. a travel sized bottle of perfume standing amongst roger’s collection of essential oils and colognes. a delicate silver locket on a chain sitting in his jewellery dish. a shade of lipstick that you don’t wear ringing a few of the cigarette butts in his cassette-case-turned-ash-tray.

if you didn’t know roger, you’d count the pair of sparkly pink converse by the door as clem’s doing as well.

“how’s the bird?”

roger emerges from the bathroom with a smirking grin, hair precisely tousled over his shoulders. “ _good.”_

“that’s nice.”

“sure is.”

you make your way across the grass towards the music building while roger gushes - well, as gushy as roger gets - about clementine. you encourage him with genuine smiles, delicate teases over how whipped he already is. you love seeing roger loved up, even if it’s very early stages.

when you’re close to your destination, you make out two figures heading in the same direction you are.

one, with the long legs, the mop of hair, is brian. the second, shorter, but with similarly dark hair, walks beside him. the new recruit, you deduce.

roger follows your gaze as you come nearer. his hair’s long — longer than roger’s, even. he’s walking close to brian, the distance almost intimate and —shit, _is that a skirt?_

“thought you said the singer was a bloke,” you murmer.

“he _is_ ,” roger looks equally confused.

you’re much closer now. and you’re an idiot. the smaller person; it’s not the fucking _singer_.

brian looks good. his white shirt unbuttoned to his prominent sternum and half-tucked into a pair of pinstriped trousers. hair looking more copper than usual in the late-evening sun. the sight would make your heart pulse, if it weren’t for the placement of his ring-clad fingers.

one hand is intertwined with another, much smaller than his. the other is placed on a waist, bare above the band of an angelically white skirt. his touch is light, the way you remember it. delicate.

“is it her?” you feel ill. your voice detached and shaky as you speak. you can feel roger eyeing you with concern in your peripheral. but you can’t pull your eyes from the sickeningly perfect picture before you. she’s _beautiful_ , and laughing, and he’s pulling her into his chest. her hands are in his hair —christ, that’s _your move._

“ _fuck_. i didn’t know she’d bloody be here.” roger mutters.

 _“is that her,”_ you repeat. you clench your fists, leaving behind pepperings of crescent moon shaped indents in the soft flesh of your palms.

roger’s next reply is soft and careful. “i think so.”

“ _jesus,_ ” you whimper. bile rises in your throat when she places a hand on his strong jaw, gently meeting his lips with hers. you turn away from roger to the garden beside you, a small gag escaping your throat.

_what the bloody hell is wrong with you? he’s just a boy, for fucks sake._

“christ, y/n.” you can feel roger behind you, pulling strand of hair behind your ear. “we’re going.” he grabs your hand and tugs you towards the dorm building. but you resist. shake your head resolutely.

“i’m fine.” your voice cracks slightly as your gaze finds brian again, leading his acquaintance into the music building.

roger lets out a particularly incredulous sigh. there’s compassion in his blue eyes, but on the whole, he looks plainly-fucking-confused. you can’t blame him. he was right when he said you’ve never been the type to get especially attached so quickly. you’ve never been a head-over-heels, giggly, crush-ridden girl. and yet here you are, keeling over into a rose bush because some guy you shagged years ago has a girlfriend that’s not you. well, to the best of his knowledge.

“something’s not right.” roger mutters, more to himself than you. “something’s happened.”

 _just fucking exhale. just tell him_.

you open your mouth, not at all sure of the bullshit that’s about to come out of it when you’re thankfully cut off by a melodic, and vaguely familiar voice.

“roger?”

your friend slides his blue eyes away from you, though his expression remains cautious. “freddie! y/n, this is our outrageous new lead.”

“freddie bulsara, love,” he offers you a hand, fingers adorned with chipped black polish that gives you the same distant de ja vu as his theatrical tone. maybe he’s in one of your classes? or you’ve— oh, shit.

“beer bloke!” you smile, genuinely, for what feels like the first time in a hot minute, taking his hand and giving your name in reply.

“beer bloke?” roger cocks his blonde head, just as freddie’s furrowed eyebrows begin to clear with realisation.

“i thought i recognised you! most heartfelt apologies again, dear. how’s your lovely top?”

you cringe. “not too well. smells like student pub.”

“will one of you dickheads tell me what on earth you’re on about?”

“appears i spilt a beer on your gorgeous y/n the other night.”

“really? with your coordination, fred?” roger smirks, and it strikes you how comfortable he seems with the new bloke after only a couple of days. it makes you warm inside. “are you sure she didn’t walk into you?”

 _soft feeling gone._ “tosser!” you protest, shouldering roger as the three of you begin walking once again towards the venue.

“it’s not exactly a secret you’ve got two left feet love.”

freddie laughs. “i’ll have to teach you a few things then.”

roger arches a blonde brow, “maybe you should show ‘er down at the pub one night.” his suggestive tone makes his insinuation clear. _a date._

you go to shoot roger a look, because really, you’re far too preoccupied for that sort of thing right now. and even though freddie’s lovely and gorgeous and seems like an _actually genuine bloke_ (a rare find on a college campus) the thought hadn’t crossed your mind in the slightest. but if seems you don’t have to, because freddie doesn’t look terribly excited by the idea either.

an uncomfortable look passes across his face, but it’s so fleeting you don’t get the chance to analyse what it could be. “love to,” he says, a little of his previous spark dimmed.

at least roger has the sense not to push the matter. “here we are. clementine’s given us the room all evening, really.”

“really cashing in on those benefits rog?” you snort, eagerly joined by freddie, who makes some comment so lewd that it has the two of you giggling until you reach the door, led by a thoroughly fed up roger who’s probably wishing he never introduced the two of you.

he shoves open the door, the whoosh that accompanies it bringing the woozy feeling back to your head in a similar fashion.

brian’s inside. so’s the girl. the last time that door opened to reveal him behind it, you’d been _so fucking happy._ “hey,” he says.

you never thought you’d hate the sound of his beautiful voice so much.

“brian.” you hope your voice doesn’t sound as pathetic to his ears as it does to yours.

the girl from outside drops her hands to his, trailing slightly behind him as he introduces her. _eyes_. he gives you definite eyes before he speaks. “this is my um.. this is effy.”

_he didn’t say “this is my girlfriend”. why does that make you feel better?_

_effy_. it’s a sweet name, but this girl looks to you like anything but.

perhaps your biased. okay, your vision is _definitely_ a little clouded by jealousy. but you don’t like the possessiveness of her fingers, hooked through brian’s belt loops. you’re unnerved by the cat-like slope to her green eyes. your stomach lurches at the sight of one of brian’s necklaces at her clavicles, half obscured by her dark curls.

“hi.” she clears her throat, extends a hand towards first roger, then freddie, then yourself. “lovely to meet some of brian’s mates.” her voice is surprisingly soft. annoyingly pretty.

 _a mate. of brian’s_. why does that description make you feel like running out and paying another visit to the rose bush?

“likewise.” you take her hand in yours, eyeing the gold bracelet clasped around her wrist. is that a cursive _B_ engraved into the flat?

 _god, want to make it any clearer?_ you feel like saying _._

freddie and roger takes the reins of polite conversation when it’s clear you’re not going to. you wish you could chat with her like it was nothing. show brian there really is nothing to worry about. _you don’t care_.

but you can’t. because you do. and you’re too preoccupied by how _fucking pretty_ she is. and how _fucking pretty_ they look together.

that headache feeling is back. tenfold. making your ears pitch and stomach lurch. you can’t stand here and watch her tuck his hair behind his ears. shift his rings up and down the fingers you once licked your own arousal off. talk in sickening unison with the voice that woke you up countless mornings in a shitty hotel bed. you can’t watch him be _hers_.

and god, you wish brian would just _fuck_ _off_ with those looks he keeps giving you. flicks of his golden brown irises, each one more concerned than the last. he looks worried. almost _scared_.

 _why do you care so much?_ you ask yourself again. but really, you know why.

brian’s not _just a boy_. he’s not some kid you’ve gone out with a few times who didn’t call you back. he’s not a uni student chatting you up at the bar, who turned out be kind of a dick.

you loved him. _love_ him. _whatever_.

and he’s with someone else.

you feel it rising up inside you again, and god - you’ll be fucked if you’re going to _cry_ in front of them. you turn around slightly, to the door just behind you. so close you could simply murmer something about a smoke and slip out.

but just as you’re about to open it, it flings towards you, a familiar brunette behind it.

“y/n!” clementine exclaims. _god, she’s too happy for you right now_. “sorry love. almost knocked you over.”

“you’re right.” you manage a soft smile, watching the door swing closed behind her defeatedly.

“hi,” roger grins, ushering her towards him. “this is freddie,” he gestures to the new frontman, who gives a theatrical wave. “you’ve met brian. and this is uh,” rogers eyes flick to yours. “this is effy,” he looks at you again, saying his final words softly. “his girlfriend.”

 _god, you want to hit him._ you know roger’s being considerate. but you’ve always fucking hated sympathy. being treated with kid gloves.

“i’m clementine,” she smiles at freddie and _effy_. “clem.”

“that’s a darling name,” freddie looks taken with her already. “i love it.”

“look, i agree,” roger nudges clem with his hip. “but we should really do what we came here for.”

brian, who’s been excruciatingly silent for the past few minutes, nods, lifting _effy’s_ hands off his waist so he can pick up his guitar.

“tell me if i’m making a complete tit of myself, won’t you?” freddie grins as you turn to follow clem to the drum risers.

“i’m sure you’ll be _splendid_ ,” you say, certain he’ll appreciate your choice of vocabulary. “but yes, i’ll give you a wanker warning if you need it.”

“you’re fun,” he winks. “i like you.”

you slip into place on the edge of the riser, clementine perched between you and _eff_ \- okay, you should probably stop saying her name like that.

“you and roger been together long?” she asks, probably trying to avoid an awkward silence while the boys tune up.

“we’ve been hanging out a week or so. y/n’s known him far longer than i have.”

“oh? he seems like a charmer.” it’s _surreal_ when she addresses you directly. almost forbidden for the two of you to speak. you feel like a mistress chatting away to an oblivious wife. _you know so much that she doesn’t_.

you let out a slightly sarcastic laugh, taming your response for clem’s benefit. you’re sure she doesn’t need to hear all the details of her potential boyfriends clandestine past. “he’s that, for sure.”

clem winks good naturedly. “what about you and brian?”

“a while, yeah. we’re pretty solid. it’s been hard with him down here, i s’pose.”

 _how long’s a while,_ you wonder. how long after your little rendezvous did brian dive straight back into the dating pool? a year? a _month?_

you’re dying to know, yet too scared to ask.

“are you at college close by?”

effy shakes her head. you glance up at the boys as she starts to speak and _shit_ , brian looks like he’s about to _piss himself_.

you furrow your eyebrows in confusion.

“no,” effy says. “i’m not at college. but i’ve got a job up north — where bri’s old uni was. where we both lived. but we’re going alright with the long distance.”

that doesn’t _land_ right. like another punch to the gut, but disjointed. you’re not quite sure why it hurts.

and then it hits you _. the distance_ , the same one brian’s sticking out with effy.

it’s the same reason the two of you let each other go. because it would be _too fucking hard to manage._

your ears buzz as you look up at brian. he’s been listening, _clearly_. his lips are slightly parted and his gaze fixed on you - like he knew what was coming and why it would hurt.

_he loves her more than he loved you, obviously._

“i’m going for a smoke.” you make your excuse, voice undoubtedly shakey.

you blind roger’s _look_ as you push through the door, down the stupidly long hallway and into the cool outside.

the air stings your warm cheeks, but it’s welcome. any kind of distraction would be.

you don’t care how cliche you must look as you collapse on the music building wall. how much of a scene you’re probably making as you drop your head into your hands. “ _fuck me_ ,” you spit.

“tell me what’s going on, _now_.”

roger stands above you. he must’ve followed you out. he looks sterner than you’ve seen before, if you’ve ever seen him look stern at all.

“rog-” you begin, but he cuts you off.

“and please don’t give me bullshit this time.” there’s a little more compassion in his voice. he drops to squat next to you. “what’s going on?”

fuck, you’d love to unload. tell him. _tell him_.

“i’m stressed. i haven’t been sleeping, really.”

 _you’re a dickhead. hear that?_ **_dickhead_**.

roger’s face goes cold. “tired? that’s what you’re giving me?”

“it’s _true_ ,” your tone definitely betrays you on that one.

“i can’t… _jesus_ ,” roger stands up again, dropping his head backwards. “alright then. you coming back inside?” his tone is frosty, at best. he’s pissed. and rightly so, you suppose.

you’re about to shake your head, when freddie emerges, followed by the rest. you push yourself to your feet hurriedly, not wanting everyone to see you curled up on the _fucking_ _ground_.

“clementine,” he gives the girl a slight push. “double booked the room. we’ve been given the boot.”

roger doesn’t reply for a beat, his stare still fixed on you. “s’alright. i need a beer, anyway.” he raises an eyebrow at brian.

“sure.” he nods his curly head. freddie agrees, too.

“coming, missy?” he offers his hand to you.

“course she is.” roger nods on your behalf.

you shoot him a glare. what’s he doing now? _punishing you?_ as if you didn’t have enough to bloody worry about.

“i’ve got a cracker of a headache, actually.” it’s not even a lie. you need to fall into bed, close your eyes and just fucking _stop thinking about brian._

freddie pouts, “nothing a shot or two can’t fix?”

you bite your lip.

“c’mon love.” clementine chimes in.

you consider giving in. a good bit of cheap vodka does sound rather appealing, actually. but the your gaze snags on the _happy couple_.

 _don’t put yourself through it quite yet_. you urge. and for once, you listen to yourself.

you shake your head apologetically. “sorry. i just need a rest.”

freddie nods understandably. christ, you love the bloke already. there’s something so excruciatingly charismatic about him, too genuine to be pure cockiness. “you’ll have to see me in action some other time, hey?”

“i’ll hold you to that,” you most definitely will.

“hope you feel better,” clem wishes you a sympathetic goodbye. roger gives you curt nod. _fucking excellent._ he’s officially pissed, you suppose.

“nice to meet you,” effy waves, her smile genuine. you wish she could just be a bitch. it’d be so much easier to hate her.

“you too.” you return her warmth as best you can.

your attention falls to brian.

 _why’d you fuck it up?_ you want to say to him. _it was a picture fucking perfect resolution to our story._

“bye.”

“bye.”

clamours over who’s buying the first round follow you as you turn towards your dorm building. halfway across the green, you can’t help but glance back. at brian, at effy, so familiarly entangled in each other. so comfortable and perfect.

 _shit_. you shake your head to yourself as you walk. _stop it. you’re going to get yourself together. tonight you’ll be shitty. tomorrow you'll be better._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: swearing, alcohol, angst, bad french
> 
> wordcount: 6.2k

_there was a knocking at your door, and a voice that stirred something beneath your ribs even though your brain hadn’t been able to process it yet. brian stood at your door, wearing jeans and a jacket and nothing underneath. you willed your eyes to meet his and not that glaringly exposed plane of smooth, freshly tanned chest._

_“can i help you sir?” you said, still weary._

_“that you can. we’re going somewhere, and i need you for that. obviously.”_

_“brian,” you said. “it’s three am.” it’s a routine of sorts. a little apprehension even though the both of you knew you’d be agreeing to whatever’s proposed before long._

_“please? i have wine.”_

_“bri, lead with that.”_

_you turned away from your door, leaving it open for him to follow. you stuck an arm out the window to decide whether you’d need a coat, needling brian on where he was taking you as you did._

_he gave nothing away, but grabbed your hand when you were ready, and pulled you towards the smoking balcony that sat between rooms five and six on your floor. the shoddy ladder that leant at its tiled bottom and down to the cobblestoned path behind the hostel wasn’t the safest form of transportation, but the owner locked the doors and retired to bed at one. and the last time you’d knocked for him to let you up after hours, he’d given the extremely drunken two of you a bushy eyebrowed glare and a good talking to in a torrent of italian._

_“the wine you were promised?” brian produced an un-labelled bottle from a deep pocket inside his coat._

_“four euro? or five?” you took a sip from the bottle. you were walking, and the glass clinked against your teeth. the wine tasted like vodka and cordial._

_“free, actually. would you believe?” brian said._

_“you don’t say?” you snorted, and then you laughed some more. “hold on. did donatella give you this?” donatella was the name you some what affectionately assigned to the woman in the bottle shop you frequented, who had leathery bronzed skin, pencilled in brows and a painfully obvious soft spot for brian._

_brian shook his head with a wince and pulled the bottle back from you, taking a gulp._

_“you’re a disgrace, may. exploiting the poor woman’s affections.”  
_

_“let me know if you still reckon she’s a ‘poor woman’ when she’s trying to grab your cock from under the counter.” brian scoffed, and sipped some more.  
_

_“my, you are quite drunk, aren’t you?” you said  
_

_“trying to erase the memories.” you both laughed. and then brian stopped walking.  
_

_“here we are.” you’d stopped at a limestone ledge, over which lay a stretch of sand, with soupy water lapping at it’s edges somewhere in the dark distance._

_“lovely,” you said. you made to sit down, but brian wasn’t having a bar._

_“what are you doing?”  
_

_“sitting.”  
_

_“sitting is for the day. there’s no one here right now.”  
_

_“and?”  
_

_“ergo,” brian said.  
_

_“pretentious tosser.” you muttered. you could hear him looking pleased with himself.  
_

_“ergo, the beach is ours.”  
_

_“shall we build a castle?” you said.  
_

_“or we could dig a hole. a big one.” brian said.  
_

_“could go swimming.”  
_

_“in our clothes?”  
_

_you took a sip of wine. the clanking made your teeth rattle and you could feel a little sediment but you swallowed, and then said; “or without.”_

_brian didn’t speak for almost a minute._

_but then he stood up, and his eyes sunk closed. he set the wine down, and began fiddling at the fly of his jeans._

_“stop peeking,” he said. “close your eyes.”  
_

_“i’m not.” you protested, though you were. you closed yours all the same.  
_

_“can’t get my fucking-” brian murmured. you started to laugh because your short was stuck on your head, and to anyone who would possibly be walking past you’d like a couple of wildly drunk teenagers about to screw.  
_

_you laughed because they’d be mostly correct, and then your hands started to shake some more because of what would complete the equation._

_“you good?” brian said. he sounded nervous. it was sweet. you liked how okay you felt, and how much you trusted that his eyes were as closed as yours.  
_

_“yep.”  
_

_“can we open our eyes to get to the water?“  
_

_“just gagging for a loophole, aren’t you bri?” you reached out to push him a little but pulled your hand back into your chest when you realised that probably wasn’t the best idea blind.  
_

_he giggled. he did that, you’d discovered._

_the water was still warm from the afternoon when you reached it, and the moon was bloated and yellow. you could see the curve of brian’s back silhouetted against it as he looked up._

_“say something french.” he said  
_

_“pretentious tosser.”  
_

_“one to talk, love. go on.”_

_“only for you,” you said, rolling your eyes, the blue and clear of water and sky blurring into one.”de la mer aux étoiles.”_

xx

but the knocking seems to persist, cracking like a hammer through your drowsy subconscious until you realise, with a jolt, that someone’s at your door.

“ _fuck off_.” you mutter at the persistent banging, dragging yourself to sit. the clock on your desk blinks three am in hazy red.

“brian?” you haven’t seen him in almost a week; a result of your diligent efforts to avoid him, roger, clementine, the music wing and _effy_.

“ _yes_. sorry, i’m so sorry to wake you,” he says. he looks a little out of it. there’s an urgency in his voice that puts you on edge.

“what’s wrong?”

“it’s roger,” brian says. you feel sick, all of a sudden. worry cuts into you like a physical pain. he must notice, because he quickly reassures you.

“no, he’s fine, he’s fine. just.. you should probably come.”

brian waits in the hall as you shrug on a coat over your pyjamas.

as soon as you shut the door, and it’s just the two of you, pressing against the silence and darkness of the hallway, you’re desperate with curiosity. you don’t want to ask. you don’t want him to think you care. but the silence is tempting you, you have to fill it.

“how’ve you been?” brian asks before you can say anything, and perfunctory conversation ensues. it hurts you somewhere deep inside that the two of you, who once talked as if it were nothing, as if it were breathing, were now shifting niceties back and forth like beads on a clunky old abacus.

conversation shrivels as you walk on through the grounds, past roger’s dorm building, past the music rooms, down towards the gate and the shabby student bar. you think about asking where you’re going, but you can’t quite summon the energy. that same gnawing is back in your stomach, a desire to know despite a desperation not to ask. but you care so much, and the silence is squeezing you like a vice and just when you think it’ll out before you can stop it, brian stops, and speaks.

“here we are.” he says, stopping short at a privy of drunken pub goers crowded at the base of one of the dorm buildings. you scan the mob for a blond head.

“where’s roger?” their necks are all craned, staring at the building above. and as your sleep gauzed brain realises what it’s seeing brian’s answer falls short of your ears, because there he is. one leg hooked over a third floor balcony, cigarette precariously perched between his teeth. the audience of drunken students cheers when he finds his footing, albeit shakey.

“jesus christ,” you say. “how bloody off it is he?”

brian shakes his head. “i really don’t know. i only had a couple, but he obviously slipped a few more in between. i left him for a minute to go to the loo, and when i came back he’d sprinted across here and was halfway up already.”

“ _why_?”

roger answers your question from three floors up. “clementine!” he cries. “baby, open the window.”

you huff. of course it’s a girl. the fucking tool.

“did something happen between them?” you ask, though you don’t want to. you take some kind of shame in not knowing what’s going on with your best mate because you’ve shut yourself in your room for a week. because you’ve been avoiding him. because you’re lying to him. you’ll really have to reassess what kind of friend you are, when roger’s life is out of imminent peril.

“not as far as i know. but i do know she isn’t in tonight.” brian tilts his head upwards. “hear that mate? she isn’t in there!” he calls to roger, then more quietly to you, “she’s gone to see her sister for a couple of nights.”

roger’s too busy singing some slurred rendition of ‘ _and i love her’_ to be listening to either of you, cigarette still between his teeth, still unlit and glowingly white.

you stare up again, brows knitted, trying to think of what to do. roger’s footing seems steady, for the moment. or at least, enough so to soften that booming pressure in your chest.

“i’ll try. if you can get this lot to shush for a fucking second.”

brian nods, “okay”. you hear him shouting something about free beer back as the pub as you push your way to the front of the crowd.

“roger!” you call. “hey, rog!”

roger looks down at you. he hasn’t shifted from his position, straddling the balconies top bar. “is that you?”

“yeah.” you say. you know he means you.

he shakes his head. his teeth lose grip around the cigarette, the white tip bouncing off the grass just beside your shoe. “where are you?”

you might’ve been slightly more amused by his ditziness if you hadn’t just been awoken at two in the morning. “i’m here, rog.” you say. “listen love, could you get down?

“no. you’re _not_ there _._ you’re _not_ …” roger begins, and it seems there’s something he wants to say, but his attention is quickly diverted. “clementine, open the _window_.”

the cold is beginning to creep it’s way under your coat now you’ve stopped walking, and your head aches with interrupted sleep and thoughts of the warm bed you’re longing to get back to. “will you get down, you absolute dickhead.” you say, except you don’t say it, you shout it.

“ _no_ ,” roger is not cowed in the slightest by your change in demeanor. “i need to see my love.”

despite your impatience, your tiredness, and your firm belief that roger won’t remember a whiff of this tomorrow morning, you’re temporarily touched by the sentiment. you’ve never heard roger talk about a girl like that before, not even while maggotted.

“roger, c’mon,” you try again. “you’re going to fall. it’s dangerous.”

“dangerous is my middle name.” he throws up his arms. the slowly thinning throng below gasps.

“ _meddows_ is your middle name.”

brian giggles from somewhere over your shoulder. you vaguely register that this is the first time you’ve been around him and not acutely aware of his presence. roger flicks you the bird.

“please, rog. clem’s not in. get down.” this, for some reason, seems to resonate with the ears upon which all your other protests have fallen deaf.

“god, you’re no fun.” roger mumbles, and he’s slinging his leg back over the balcony railing and shimmying back down the brickwork, surprisingly deft for how sloshed he clearly is.

you embrace him when he’s back on the ground. “jesus christ,” you mutter into his shoulder. you’ve missed his smell.

“just me, love,” roger smirks lazily. his cocky facade is slightly dented when he’s sick over his shoes a second later.

“bri-” you begin. it comes without thought, but as soon as it’s left your mouth, it feels wrong. “-an. brian.” _styled that one out perfectly._ “can you help me get him back to my dorm?”

“yeah, ‘ve got him.” brian says. he slips an arm under roger’s side.

“a three story climb down two seconds ago, and now he can’t even fucking stand,” you say.

“no,” roger whines. “don’t need you two.”

“mate, you actually do,” you grunt under his weight.

roger, in the incoherent slur you’ve known to speak with a candour that it’s soberly delicate counterpart would never, says, “you two are more fucked up than i am.”

brian looks at you over his blonde crown. you avert your eyes.

xx

you’re quite aggressively sick of roger by the time you reach your door - of feet that refuse to make contact with the ground, and of lips, brushed crimson by the cold, that mumble inconvenient truths that wind the tension between you and brian even tighter than before.

you haul roger into your room, finally, and over to the bed.

“rog,” you protest as he loops his arms around your neck, refusing to submit to the blankets and the warmth. “rog, mate, get on the bed.”

he mutters something that sounds awfully like “you would try and get me into bed, tink.” before finally surrendering.

“what did he just call you?” brian says. he adjusts the pillow under roger’s head.

“tink. hasn’t called me that in months.”

“i’m guessing there’s some kind of story there.”

you shake your head. “not really.” not one you want to tell.

roger snorts, eyes still closed. “bullshit.”

you poke his thigh. “nobody fucking asked you.” you say.

brian laughs softly. “you don’t have to tell me.”

roger sticks his hand in the air without sitting up. “i’ll tell ‘im. first year here, we used to go to the uni pub and get completely shit faced.”

“ _used to._ ”

roger shushes you emphatically. “the girl is utterly off her nut-”

“he’s exaggerating,” you say.

“i’m _not_. she’s plastered, and i leave her alone for two seconds to try and talk to some chick. you’d think i was pulling bloody teeth from the way she carried on. kept throwin’ her arms around my neck and whining that she couldn’t be alone. she’s a _tinkerbell_.”

you glare at him.

brian looks confused. “a tinkerbell?”

“she needs attention or she dies.”

they both collapse into giggles.

“ha ha. very funny, i hate you both.”

“tink.” roger says, grabbing at the back of your jumper. “tink, i’m cold. fucking freezing in’ere.”

“get the hot waterbottle then.”

he pouts at you.

“no. fuck off, roger. do it yourself.”

roger groans, dragging himself out of bed and stumbling to the sink. you can hear him rifling through your drawers as you turn to brian, who’s just finished fishing a spare blanket out from the cupboard above your chest of drawers and throwing it over the collection of pillows on your floor.

“thank you.” you say.

“shouldn’t be thanking me. i’m not the one who’s got to sleep there.”

“mmm,” you grimace. “while sleeping beauty gets the bed.” you cock your head towards roger, who’s standing at the tap, the pale, rubbery blue thing clutched in his hand.

“oi tink.” he approaches and wiggles the flaccid thing around in front of you.“it’s still fuckin’ cold.” 

brian stifles a laugh from behind you. “did you heat up the water mate?” he says.

roger glares at him, then you, then the water bottle in his hand. finally, as if he’s realised the inanimate object can’t be persuaded to talk, he says; “thought that was it’s job.”

brian buries his face in his shoulder. you bring a hand to yours.

“okay.” you say. “time for bed, mister. it’s five am.”

“fine.” roger mumbles with surprising cooperation, and drops to the ground on the mattress brian has prepared for you.

“roger.” you kick him softly. “i was going to let you have the bed, prick.”

roger doesn’t stir, air escaping his delicate nose in heavy puffs. you can’t pretend you’re all that upset.

“oh well.” you say. “guess the beds mine then.” you fall back on to it, vaguely patting the spot next to you for brian, who’s still standing, a little awkward, by the cabinets.

“bloody shame.” he says as he falls down next to you. “that setup looked plush.”

you laugh softly. “i’ll call dibs on it for next time.” you haven’t been able to help your heavy eyelids drooping, but you can hear brain smiling.

after a beat of silence, he says. “you are good to each other, aren’t you.” it’s not really a question.

you open your eyes. “rog and me?”

brian nods.

“s’pose. couldn’t tell you why half the time.”

brian leans a palm against your wall as he chuckles.

his presence feels heavy then. he’s in your room, with his sound and his smile and his smell. you can see his hazel eyes flickering over your bedside table, your dresser, your half open cupboards. you wonder what he’s thinking, how his image of you is being tinkered at with each of your belongings he notes.

does he approve of your record collection? the books stuffed into your shelves? did he pick you for a clutterer, or are the mugs and jewellery dishes and empty bottles of perfume a surprise?

you could never have imagined him here, in your dorm or at your school. he seems (with the subtraction of one tiny, green eyed factor) to slot so perfectly into your life on paper; a place at the uni, mates with roger, the two of you reunited. and yet, he feels completely and utterly alien at the same time. it makes you think, having him lying next to you, how on earth he ended up there once again.

“why’re you here, brian?” you ask, struck quite dumb by the realisation you’ve not yet asked.

he blinks plainly. “i thought-, i mean. you asked for my help. i can go now though, if you want to sleep.”

“no, no, that’s not… i just meant. i don’t think i ever properly asked you why you’re here. why you moved universities.”

he pushes himself into his elbows so he can look at you. “did i really not tell you?” he says incredulously.

you shake your head. “s’pose we had other things to talk about.” it comes out a little bitter.

“god.” brian says. he lies back down. “um, yeah. i don’t know if you remember, but i wanted to study this zodiacal light phenomenon when i went to uni.”

you nod. you remember with clarity his many rantings about the stars, the universe, and what he wanted to write about them.

“well, i got a scholarship. imperial, i mean. i suppose they’re interested in the research.”

“that’s incredible.” you say, letting out a breath through your teeth. “congratulations.”

“thanks,” he says. he’s settled back onto the bed, intentions of leaving seemingly gone.

his presence next to you is quite intoxicating. it makes you reckless with longing.

“where’s your girlfriend?” you say, without really meaning to. and finally you’ve asked what you’ve wanted to know since you opened the door to him an hour ago.

brian doesn’t look at you. “she went home a couple days ago. said to say goodbye to all my mates.”

“right. all your mates.” you echo. it sounds more wounded then you intended it to, so you clear your throat with haste and ask something stupid about how he’s finding his coursework.

but brian, for once, is not deterred.

“you’re not just a mate.” he says, and his voice sounds different. unguarded and clear. it makes you think that all your previous conversations have felt like trying to talk to someone who’s stuck at the bottom of a well.

you’re not sure how to respond, if what you think you’re hearing him say is even real, or just mere wishful thinking..

you reply with the only thing you can think of. “i know.”

brian sucks in a breath. your insides coil tight as a drum with his inhale, you can’t relax until he finally says; “fuck, i’ve missed you.”

a dam seems to break over the both of you, lying there in the dark. brain’s taken to it with a sledgehammer. his candour scares you in part. the fact that he’s finally addressing, even just a little, what’s eating you inside. while all the awkward silences, lingering looks and conversations cut short have made you miserable over the last week, you find solace in the unsaid. the wall between you and brian here, at imperial, where he has a girlfriend and you two shagged just once, and you and brian in italy, in love, keeps you safe. it keeps you from feeling, properly, because if you felt it all properly you don’t know what you’d do.

you stare straight up. the whole thing feels far too tentative to make eye contact. “i’ve missed you too.” your hands and voice shake with the sudden surge of emotion.

you feel brian’s relief, it makes him very real. you’re starkly aware of the dip in the mattress where he lies, the warmth of him soaking through, his fingers finding the tips of yours.

you lie for a little while, not really saying much, just looking up at the star speckled tapestry you’ve hung on your roof. it’s always been a subtle reminder of him, even if you’d haven’t let yourself admit it. you wonder if brian’s head is as busy as yours. he grips your hand a bit more deliberately, and you decide it must be.

you suspect effy is running through, in all her pretty haired, green eyed glory. you suppose he’s feeling a little guilty. you suppose you should feel a little guilty, too, lying in the dark like this with a boy with a girlfriend, and wanting so badly to kiss him.

an image of a big spoon digging out your insides comes to you all of a sudden, turning you inside out, searching for even the slightest speck of guilt or apprehension amongst everything else you’re feeling. it doesn’t find any. despite everything you know about right and wrong, good and bad, you can’t help but feel that you deserve this, in some awful way. it’s _you_ and it’s _brian_. an exception if there ever was one. a kiss, just one. you deserve that much, surely.

“i had a dream about you the other night. well, sort of.” brian says. he sounds loud after all the silence.

it’s a welcome distraction from staring at his lips. “oh? what happened, then?” you say.

“i had this new telescope, and i couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. i’d set it up perfectly, taken it apart, put it back together again. cleaned it, polished it, even exchanged some of the parts.”

“no dice?”

“none at all. i couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and it was infuriating, cause i’m usually good with my hands like that. with telescopes and stuff.”

you nod, as if the statement hadn’t made your stomach tighten. he was good with his hands. most certainly.

“and then i was outside, on this perfectly clear night. and all i could see was black, still. i walked around to the front of the thing, and i saw something taped over the lens.”

“you hadn’t noticed that before? in all your reparations?” you forgot how you used to raz him, and it’s a little amusing how naturally you fall back into it.

“hush. you can’t insult my intelligence, it’s a dream.” god, everything about him is the same. the smile of amusement and faux frustration. the way his hands go to his hair when he’s talking for a long time.

“of course.” you say.

“anyway, i pulled it off to look at it properly, and it was picture of you.”

“the plot thickens,” you say, and you hope he can’t hear the thickness in your voice.

another one of those smiles. “so i turned it around so you were facing into the lens, and i went back to have a look. and i could see all the stars.”

you think he must be attempting to break your heart a bit. or at least make you cry.

“i’m an expert at analysing dreams.” you tell him, instead of all the other things what he just told you brings to mind.

“oh? what’s your hypothesis here?”

“i’d say,” you turn on your side, so you can properly look at him. it feels safe now, to look at him. you don’t feel so much like you’re going to scare him off. or yourself, for that matter. “that it means my charisma and beauty are unparalleled even by the stars you so adore.”

brian dips his head with a snort. “can i request a different analyst? you seem a little biased.”

“no. you can’t.”

“well. i’d say that’s quite true, then.”

you’re glad for the dark, when he says that. he used to say things like that a lot. you were more accustomed to them in italy. the words themselves and the soft timbre of the voice delivering them. you used to blush, but your hands never shook like this. you feel a bit trembly all over, actually. like you’re spliffed up. like your blood is going faster than usual. talking, really talking to brain again is one incredible mind fuck. a never ending de ja vu. it’s doing a number on your heart.

you want to tell him you miss him, and you love him, and you want him to stay with you for good. to drag the words from deep within your consciousness, where they’ve rested for so long.

and suddenly, from the corner of your room, there’s a blinking and flashing and shrieking. you hate that sound, the way it makes you feel first thing in the morning. you never use the alarm, if you can help it. of course this morning would be one of the few you do. _morning_. it’s six thirty now, it’s tomorrow. somehow that knowledge seems to pry back open a divide between you and brian you’d been so happy to feel close.

things always feel different in the light of day, you can’t help but think that this will be the same. daytime brian has a girlfriend. you suppose nighttime brian does too, but it’s easier to ignore when it’s quiet and dark and he’s lying so close to you, curling his hand around yours like he’s trying to become you.

“fuck,” you groan. your left side feels cold when you sit up away from brian to hammer on the off button.

“what’s it for?” brian says. maybe it’s just you - just a bit of overthinking, but you could swear he sounds more stilted than he did five minutes ago. awkward. “you can’t have a class this early?”

“no, fuck. i’ve been having trouble with some of my french lit coursework. i’m meeting my professor at nine and i’ve got finishing it before then. god, i think my brain would overheat if i tried it now. i’ve had about three hours of sleep.” you massage the bridge of your nose. the air between you and brain feels chilly at all this real world talk, and you can sense him shrinking back into himself.

“i would offer my help, but i don’t know if i’d be doing you any favours.” he says. you want to ask him if he remembers any of the french you taught him _back then_ , but it doesn’t really feel right. he’s too far away.

“that’s okay.” you wave him off instead. “shit. i’d better do it.”

 _no. you don’t. what the fuck is wrong with you? it’s_ brian _._

brian chews his lip. “should i go?” he says.

you look from him, to the stack of notes on your desk and back again. he’s shifting from foot to foot like he always did whenever he was unsure, and he smells like slightly stale vodka (thanks rog). but he also smells like your sheets, and his hair is dented from your pillow, and it’s all so familiar and you want him to stay.

“i’ll go.” brian says, because you must’ve been silent for too long. you’re starting to feel that slow, aching discomfort that always comes with nostalgia. with wishing things were the way they used to be, but not having the slightest clue how to make them so. if it were two years ago, fuck, even ten minutes ago, you would’ve asked him to stay. it feels impossible now and you don’t know why.

“yeah,” you say. “okay.”

“bye, then.” he steps over roger and drums his fingers on the frame as he pries open your ever-stiff door.

“ _brian_ ,” you imagine saying to the back of his head. “ _i had a dream about you too._ ”

xx

you lie on your bed for a while after brian leaves. there’s no chance sleep will come, and yet you’ve not a hope of concentrating on your coursework. all that leaves you is your bed, your ceiling, and a burning kind of desire that brian was still next to you.

you make a tea, but can’t bring yourself to drink it, and it sits cold on your bedside table. just when you’re contemplating having a quiet wank purely out of sheer determination to distract yourself, a groan comes from the floor. you lower yourself over the edge of the bed to observe the writhing pile of blankets.

“hello rog. awake, are we then?”

another groan.

“how’s the head?”

“ _fuck off._ ” and then another groan.

“ah, you’re welcome. getting you up here wasn’t any trouble at all.” you mutter, standing up to make another cup of tea because you know he’ll demand one once he’s fully conscious.

sure enough, the pillows soon rearrange to allow a heavy lidded eye to see through, and his croaky voice emerges. “can i have a tea?”

“it’s up here.” you set the steaming mug on your bedside table. “get off the floor.”

roger movies in conjunction with his blanket and at least two pillows, dropping onto your bed and smothering you in linen. you still haven’t seen his face, really.

“thanks.” he pulls the tea into his chest, all the while remaining in his doona burrow like some kind of demented badger.

“i thought you were always chipper after a night out rog. something about ‘ _practice and coffee’_?” you imitate him with air quotes and a smirk you know he can’t see. and then you feel a little wind go out of you because the day he said that was the day brian came back.

he clears his throat. “a night out usually doesn’t constitute all the vodka in russia for me, though.”

“that’s fair.” you say.

“not to the russians,” says the doona.

“do you remember what little shenanigans you put me through last night, then?”

you hear roger sip his tea and swallows emphatically. “yes,” he says. “i think i do.”

“go on then.”

“i went to clementine’s dorm, and i banged on her door, but she wasn’t there. i might have sung. i’m sure i did, actually. and then brian was gone, and then you were both there. i had an audience, i remember. a bunch of stragglers from the pub. good times.”

you chuckle. “oh, roger. you naive little thing.”

“what?”

“you don’t understand the lengths of your own fucking idiocy.”

the doona sounds worried when he repeats himself. “what? what did i do? i didn’t call her up at her sisters or anything, did i? fuck, i’ll pierce myself in the eye with a drumstick if i did.”

“no, no.” you reassure him. “nothing like that.”

“then what?”

you duck your head, because really, it’s quite funny now. “you tried to get in her window. from the balcony.”

“but her room’s on the third floor —“

you see the doona collapse in on itself, and roger emits a pained groan from within. “ _no_.”

“fraid so.”

“fuck, and there were all those _people_. and she wasn’t even there. i’m such a prick, christ.”

“it’s what they call character development, roger. last time you scaled a dorm building was purely for a quickie. times are changing.”

roger groans again, his preferred method of communication this morning, it would seem. “and how did you come to be involved?”

“brian came to get me.”

“why?”

god, is he being deliberately dense? you look the doona right where you imagine roger’s face is obscured beneath. “he was worried. _i_ was worried rog. it’s funny, but it was bloody scary. i thought you might die.”

he sniffs twice. “i know. sorry. thanks. for worrying. and for coming.”

“of course.”

“really.”

“i know.”

you hear the blankets rustle and there he appears, sallow skinned and dull eyed, smelling vacantly of sick and spliff.

“are we pretending, then?” roger says.

“pretending what?” you try to hold his gaze, but you know exactly what he’s talking about so you drop your eyes to your thumbs.

“that there’s not something you’re keeping from me. and that you haven’t been running away all week.”

“can we?” it’s a feeble effort.

“no.” he turns, shuffles his blankets a bit more so he can reach his hands out to grab both of yours. “whatever it is, you can tell me, okay. and you don’t have to. but i think you want to and i think you need to. i can see how much grief it’s causing you. and i know it’s got something to do with brian.”

you really hadn’t expected to cry this morning, and you don’t even realise you are until roger swipes a hot tear from your jaw. it hasn’t felt right to cry before. crying would be admitting. crying would be dredging it all back up. but now, with everything pulled out root and stem and lying at your feet whether you like it or not. you think crying is okay. crying feels good.

“aw, love.” roger pulls you into him and pats your back at a soothing, steady, yet somehow complex tempo only a drummer could pull off.

“sorry.” you sniff into his bare chest. he cards through your hair with one hand, gently shushing your apologies. he’s always been good at comforting. 

“now.” he says when you’ve sat up. “do you want to talk about it?” 

“yeah.” 

“go on, then.”

“alright,” you sniff. “have a shifty at this.” _here goes fucking nothing_.

“you know how i said brian and i had shagged once before? and how i said we just met at some pub soon after graduating sixth? yeah. that’s not quite what happened. you know i went to italy that summer? yeah, sicily, that’s right. for three months. he was there. we met there, i mean. we were staying in the same cheap as piss hostel, and we met in the shitty little bar it had downstairs. he spoke english and he looked approximately my age and he’s fit, even you have to admit. so we talked. he was great, we got along like we’d known each other forever. 

“we kept meeting, every evening in that bar, and pretending it was by chance even though they served probably the shittiest drinks i’ve ever tasted and we wouldn’t have spent ten minutes there if it wasn’t for each other. eventually we started going out. spending days together, and then evenings. and then we were sleeping in each other’s rooms. it’s hard not to get attached when you’re fucking someone for the first time. don’t _laugh_ , you arse. we were only nineteen. that was the whole summer, really. just the two of us, all wrapped up in each other. very happy. 

“and then it was august, and we talked about where we wanted to go to uni. we didn’t mention names, or maybe we did, it was so long ago. he said he was going home and that was just so far away. so we decided on this rule, which was bloody stupid, and so illogical, but we convinced ourselves it would work so we didn’t have to think about it anymore. the day i was leaving came, and it just felt so unreal that we could be leaving each other. and so did the whole idea we’d concocted; that we’d just fall back into oblivion with each other. but it happened. i got on the train, and i didn’t see him again until you went and made him your fucking guitarist. 

one of yours breaths begins to trip into the next.

“we fell in love and we’d finally come back together and then you told me he had a girlfriend. and they’re doing long distance, the same we’d parted because of. and now everything’s fucked, and they seem so in love. but i’m also in love with him, and i always have been and i can’t see myself stopping.”

you finally stop talking with a heaving breath, and it feels cleaner than any you’ve taken before. like there’s been something poisonous in the air and now it’s cleared.

roger’s hands, who’s grip had been tightening around yours increasingly as you’ve spoke, drop limp. he looks at you with a kind of smirk, and you realise it’s full of suspicion and he thinks you’re bullshitting him.

“i’m serious.”

roger’s mouth goes slack. _really_ , his eyebrows say, and you nod.

his hands go to his mouth, then his hair, and back to yours. he inhales through his teeth. “fucking hell.”

xx


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: swearing, alcohol, angst
> 
> wordcount: 3.9k

“i’m sorry,” you say.

“why’d you say that?”

“that shouldn’t’ve happened.”

he shakes his head stiffly and looks to the dark, coppery clouds above the blocks of student housing. “not your fault.”

you sigh inwardly, hating this firm, quiet frontage he’s insisted upon on the whole drive home. a refusal to engage.

“whose was it, then?” you say. you know he wants you to get out of the car. he’s stopped and turned the whole thing off, and he’s rapping his fingers on the wheel all while staring pointedly ahead. you would quite like to get out too. but the polite inclination to not overstay your welcome is pale in comparison with this consuming desire to _make him talk to you._

“it just happened,” he says. he sounds very tired.

“things don’t just happen,” you say.

what had happened was this. 

two days after brian had stayed in your room overnight, and you’d held hands on your bed and finally, actually, talked, roger found you in the cafe. he sat down next to you with this condoling, gentle expression, put his hand on your shoulder and said:

“you okay mate?”

usually this kind of pitiful sympathy annoyed you. every time brian had given you one of those pandering, fleeting, “i’m sorry” looks, it made you want to smack him around the mouth with his own guitar.

but something felt nice about roger’s comfort. maybe you were making excuses because you were happy to be back on solid ground with him. but either way, you were able to swallow the instinct to tell him to fuck off quite comfortably.

“i’m fine. seriously, don’t go thinking of me as some like, scorned woman, or whatever. i’m fine.” you said, pushing your hot chocolate towards him with a pencil.

he took a sip. “i still want to check up on you. you’re not doing yourself any favours by bottling things up, you know.”

“since when were you so fucking in touch with your emotions? if i remember correctly, your go to method is to chuck a stereo out the window.”

roger laughed. “i was drunk when that happened, it doesn’t count. you do stupid shit when you’re drunk.”

“speaking of,” you said, sitting up in your cushy chair. you’d barley had the chance to discuss friday night with him. things had been rather derailed by your reveal of the whole brian debacle.

“oh, piss off, would you,” roger groaned.

“have you spoken to miss clementine? does she know what happened?”

“yes, i have. and no, she doesn’t. and she never will, yes?”

you dropped your head to your knees and laughed, and roger sunk into his chair and sulked.

“i came to find you to ask if you wanted to come out with us tonight,” he said. “but now i think perhaps not.” he stabbed your pencil against the tough velvet of his armchair, leaving grey pinpricks in the dusky yellow.

“no, no, let me come.” you forced a stern expression onto your face. “i’ll behave. promise.”

roger put the pencil down and flicked his hair over his shoulder with the impression of indifference. “fine. i’ll allow it.”

“who’s coming?”

he gave you a slightly shifty look and started speaking at a rapid, babbling pace. “me, clementine, freddie. freddie said he would invite brian, and i didn’t want to say no because i know you don’t want anyone to know about the two of you. but i don’t know if he said yes, so he might be coming, but he also might not.”

every time he said brian’s name, he swallowed his breath, as if it were some dirty curse you found particularly offensive.

“i caught about two words of that.”

roger gave you this pained, “please don’t make me say it again” look and remained silent.

“it’s fine. i don’t mind if he comes.“ you said.

roger scoffed. “yeah, sure.”

“no really. i’ll be careful too, don’t worry.”

roger looked weary, but he got up, kissed you on the head and left, promising to send freddie to your dorm later on to fetch you.

it seemed that confiding in him hadn’t purged you of any of your anguished longing to see brian whenever you could. in fact, it had perhaps made it worse, because now you didn’t have to veil it with the pretence that you’d only met once before.

so you waited for freddie in your room until almost half seven, painting your nails and lining your eyes and trying to decide what to do when you saw brian. would it be better to act warm and unaffected? to make him think he had no power over you, you were perfectly okay. or should you be a little cold and reserved? let him know he didn’t yet have your affection. would that just make you seem bitter?

just when you’d landed landed on the latter, and then changed your mind to the former once again, freddie knocked at your door.

“decent?” polished fingers appeared around the frame, three black and two red.

“physically, at least. come in love.” you said.

he closed the door carefully behind him and turned around. he looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself, so you gestured to the bed and he sat.

“you look very nice.” he said while you picked a jacket from you wardrobe and sat down to pull on your shoes. “nice boots.”

“why thank you. i’m a size five, if you ever want to borrow them.”

“i knew i liked you.”

you smiled and offered him some vodka and lemonade, which he took. you chatted idly as you finished getting ready and trotted down the stairs and out onto the grounds. you talked about roger, briefly, and the band, and drunk more from your flask and complained that it was “too fucking expensive to buy anything other than piss weak beer at these places”.

you were both tipsy when you reached the street, and a little drunker still by the time you’d exited your cab and found roger, brian and clementine inside the pub.

it was crowded and very loud. there was live music around the bend of the bar and the low red light brought the smell of the seedy hostel restaurant and brian’s old velvet blazer surging back to you.

“hi,” you said to him, drunk enough to have forgotten your earlier intentions of acting aloof and unaffected.

“hey.” he smiled, and you felt as if something dissolved between you again. the desperation and the painful quietness was shoved to the side a little, and you thought maybe you could have fun with him just once.

freddie sat next to brian, so you hugged clementine and slapped roger’s hand and sat down next to them, between clem and freddie, across from roger and brian.

roger squeezed your hand over her knee. you gave him a reassuring glance, that you were okay. and you did feel okay, actually. you briefly considered that the remedy to all your brian problems was to be eternally tipsy whenever he was around, and then nothing would phase you so much.

roger bought everyone drinks and brian asked clementine how her visit to her sisters was. roger tensed the arm that was draped around her.

if you were sober, you might’ve wondered why he was so bothered about the thing. clementine would find it funny, most likely. surely embarrassment wasn’t the heart of it, because roger had never been one to shy away from making fun of himself. but alas, you were two drinks drunker than you were when you arrived, so his anxiety went unnoticed.

“yeah, nice. she’s got married last year to this well to do lawyer bloke so they’ve got a great place.” clementine said.

“he a nice guy?” brian said.

“yeah, he’s lovely. wasn’t there though. he’s in oxford at the moment for something or rather.”

you all drank some more. roger changed the subject rather hastily and you zoned out a bit, focusing instead on brian’s hands as they twirled his straw around an empty glass.

you felt your head getting closer to the table, and then your chin was resting on the scuffed wood, and your eyes watched contentedly at his hands going around and around.

freddie must have thought you were looking a little too out of it, because he took you to the uni-sex toilets that had graffiti all over the walls and an unused tampon on the floor, and held your hair in a knot as you threw up.

he took you outside and got you some water, and waited with you until your eyes cleared a bit and your cheeks lost their drunk flush.

freddie said something you barely heard over the rush of traffic and your own head, a question about roger and clementine. when you asked him what he said, he said _never mind, dear_ and took you back inside.

“feeling better?” brian said when you came back to the table.

you still had enough alcohol left in you to sit down next to him, but were sober enough to not take his hand in yours like you so wanted.

“clementine was telling us about this prize she’s in for. a photography thing.”

you nodded slowly. you loved when he spoke to you. you could have lived off it. it felt like opening a door away from your normal life and closing it behind you.

“what’s that about, then?” freddie said to clementine.

“competition through the fine arts faculty. you submit a set, and the top ten or so are shown in this exhibit during grads.” she was a bit drunk, but everyone was. her cheeks were bright and she had this easy, giggly smile on her face.

“yeah, but you can’t just enter, right clem? you had to do like, exceptionally well in your exams to get picked.” roger prompted, and she nodded proudly.

“good on you,” you said, clinking your class to hers. “great window of opportunity.”

you hadn’t even realised what you’d said until you caught roger’s glaring eye, and you heard brian snicker from next to you. he cleared his throat and leant forward.

“win-dow— god, sorry, _when do_ you have to have your photos in by?” brian said, his face deadpan.

clementine looked briefly at roger, who was gripping the table and looking almost amused, but pissed off by a much larger majority. “next month. and they’ll chose the winners by mid-semester.”

“i’m sure you’ll get through love,” brian said, holding his glass up to toast.

you hoisted yours with a snort, clear liquid dripping down your wrist. “yeah, clementine for the win!” you dropped your voice to a whisper and leant into brian’s chest. “ _dow_.”

he bit his fist in an attempt to keep from laughing. freddie and clem looked slightly confused. roger looked livid.

you couldn’t bring yourself to really care. brian was laughing, so were you. his face was so close, just above yours. you could reach up and touch it. run your finger along the bridge of his long, elegant nose and down to his lips. you were so close, you could see the soft fronds curling at his hairline, and you could tell that he was wearing a different cologne from the one he used to. this one was woodier, and darker, and probably more expensive. the other one, the one he used to wear in italy, smelt like soap and the stems of fresh flowers and rain. and it might have just been the washing powder his mum had packed for him, and not a cologne at all.

brian was a bit less drunk than you, so he seemed to care more that everyone was staring at him.

he stopped laughing and cleared his throat. “i’m going to get a drink,” he said.

“can i come?” you asked so suddenly it shocked you.

“please,” he said, which shocked you as well.

he helped you up from the table. you could feel roger’s concern, more potent than his annoyance as you walked away.

brian bought you a drink and smiled keenly when you said thank you. you kept pushing yourself to feel uncomfortable or uncertain in his presence, but you couldn’t. it was like a sneeze that wouldn’t come. the angsty despondency you’d felt since his arrival seemed to have slipped through your fingers like fine silk.

it felt pleasantly reckless to accept. it was stepping off a very high precipice, but into waters you knew were deep and safe.

you pulled brian into the crowd of bodies, close to the crouched black stage and close to you.

the song was fast and the drums were loud. brian had never been a dancer, he was too shy. but he put his hands on your waist then and swayed with the beat.

his chest was warm, his forehead pressed to yours. his hands fit on your hips like there were groves there moulded to his fingers.

you were so happy to be close to him that your breaths tripped into one another and it sounded like you were laughing. he was laughing too, that kind of laugh that’s a release of energy more than anything else.

the light in the place was so like that of the hostel bar. jerky increments of crimson shadow cut across brian’s face in a way that was incredibly familiar. you let your eyelids droop, and you could see him lent across a table covered in a ring stained white cloth, telling you he about how he built his first guitar.

the song changed and he said something you couldn’t hear. you leant closer, your hands falling to either side of his neck.

“i like being with you,” he said.

you kissed him.

his lips tasted the same, mint and wine. they were soft and exact, like they’d been carved from precious stone. you couldn’t tell if the band still played or if people still moved around you. you couldn’t remember what they looked like, or what you looked like. everything tumbled and tripped and fell into the vacuum that was you kissing brian. you remembered him in italy, him with his girlfriend, him in your room, eclipsed into the one, singular moment of his lips on yours.

brian pulled away and you dropped your head into his chest. he was breathing shakily and heavily above you, onto your bare shoulder. he kissed your jaw, then the side of your neck.

the song that was playing ended and another began, and that ended too.

you thought that another had begun playing, but it was rather un-rhythmic and full of words with no music, and then you realised it wasn’t a song at all, but roger.

“what the fuck are you two doing?” he said. you stepped back and swayed. roger grabbed your wrist in one hand and brian’s in the other and pulled you back to the bar. you lent against the solid, cool wood.

you looked at brian, with his liquid brown eyes, and red around the rims of his lips from kissing you, and pink splashed on his high cheekbones.

you knew with vague certainty that roger was talking and that he was pissed off, but brian captured your attention with such clarity that everything else just seemed kind of blurred.

“christ, can you listen to me, you dickhead.” roger clapped in your face. “clementines asking me what the fuck you’re both on, with that whole window thing, so thanks for that.”

you laughed instinctively. you could hardly remember what you’d done. sitting at the table with the rest of them felt years ago.

“and you. what’re you doing with her? i get you’re drunk, yeah, but you’ve got a girlfriend.”

“no i don’t.” you said before you realised that roger had turned away from you and was talking to brian. he laughed, and roger looked unamused.

“we just danced,” you told him. brian looked at you intently over roger’s delicate shoulder. “you should come dance.”

“you should come home. seriously, you look like you’re about to cark it.”

“god, why are you so _sober_ ,” you poked roger in the chest.

“i’m not.”

“you are,” said brian. he leant across the bar. “get this bloke a drunk. _drink_.”

“i don’t want a drunk. let’s go.”

you allowed yourselves to be pulled back to the table by roger, on which sat a row of empty shot glasses, and on which stood freddie, who was dancing.

“did you do all of these fred?” you asked him.

he looked down at you and nodded. “i needed them, third wheeling these two.”

clementine snorted. freddie jumped down and threw an arm around your shoulder. “what’s the move?”

“these two need to get home,” roger said. “and they’re not getting in a cab alone together, and i can’t take them, because clem and i are going to meet some of her friends at the dove.”

“why can’t we just put them in a cab?” clementine said.

roger caught your eye. you knew what he was thinking. “they’re both pissed,” he lied.

freddie stretched his other arm up and around brian’s shoulder, which meant he had to stand rather lopsidedly because it was four inches taller than his own. “they can come back to mine. i live off campus, it’s close. my flat mates are both out for the night so there’s two free beds.”

“perfect. good luck.” roger said. he grabbed clem’s hand and pulled her outside, looking unfettered now that he had shed the responsibility of a drunk you and a drunk brian.

brian looked at you over freddie’s dark, shiny head.

“let’s go my loves.”

brian paid for the cab. he sat in the front, and you leant against freddie in the back. he sang while you stared at the back of brian’s head, his neck, the plane of his shoulders.

you got out of the cab and then you were in a bed. the sheets smelled unwashed and there were no cases on the pillows.

you thought of brain as you fell asleep. you felt that surely, you could have gone with him into the other empty bed at some point, but now it was too late. when had it become too late?

in the morning, or rather the afternoon, because it was almost one when you woke up, the shower was running. the pipes groaned from the wall behind the bed.

you lay there, taking in the room around you. there were lyric prints from records tacked up around the walls. the wardrobe was open and full of spindly wire hangers. there were no clothes on them, though, they were lumped in a pile below on the scratched floorboards.

at some point, the shower stopped and you got up. freddie had left a towel at the door, so you took it to the bathroom.

the air was still hot and thin and the floor was damp with footprints. you weren’t sure who had been in there, or who was in the flat, even.

the door didn’t have a lock so you jammed the sopping wet bath towel under it and stripped off your clothes. you felt absently sick as you rotated under the hot stream, your bare arms brushing the slippery, mint coloured tiles.

someone was laughing through the walls as you dried yourself roughly and pulled your clothes back on. you wicked a stripe of steam from the mirror so you could see yourself.

the water had melted away your smudgey black eye make up and blush, so your face looked clean and young. little drops of water clung to your eyelashes and eyebrows.

“morning gorgeous,” freddie said when you found your way into the kitchen.

brian was sitting down and drinking coffee, his voice soft and thin as he said hello.

there was a fleck coffee powder on his lip. it looked like a little freckle, and it kind of suited him. you suddenly thought how pretty he would look with a smattering of pale freckles across his nose.

it was only when you sat down next to him and drank in his clean, soapy smell that you properly remembered.

you’d thought of the kiss as you fell asleep, when you woke up and when you were in the shower. but it was like you were playing a short film over in your head, one you could only remember the rough plot of, and none of the finer details.

but now it came crashing back to you. his delicate hands on your jaw and his parted, fevered lips.

you felt like the wind had been knocked out of you, and you couldn’t look at him. his elbow stretched out in front of your eyeline on the table, the fabric of his jacket pulled taut over it.

“do either of you have money for a cab home?” freddie said.

you shook your head no. you thought brian probably did too, because you remember him paying the driver last night.

“it’s fine. i drove.” his words seemed to float in the air. you heard them over and over again, and you could hardly hear anything else.

“you have a car?” freddie knit his dark brows together.

“roger’s. he lent it to me because i wanted to check out this place that sells vintage acoustics a way out. i came straight to the pub from there.”

roger lent you his car? you wanted to say. he must really love you.

“are you sober, though?”

“it’s almost three. we weren’t out that late, i’m fine.” brian said. “we can just walk back to where i parked.”

 _we_. that you meant you.

.

now you’re in the car still.

“i didn’t mean that.” brian says. “i just meant that we were drunk and it was kind of bound to happen.”

“bound to happen?”

brian lets go of the wheel and looks at you. you realise that this is the first time you’ve looked each other in the eye since last night. “you know what i’m talking about. there’s still.. tension, you know.”

you look at him. he seems nervous now he’s dropped his steely visage.

“attraction, like, it doesn’t just go away. it can’t.”

“you’re attracted to me?”

“obviously.”

“ _obviously_.”

“does that really surprise you?”

“maybe not. but i thought, i don’t know, that you’d moved on.”

“even after the other night?”

“not so much. but the next morning, yeah. when you left.”

“i thought you wanted me to.”

“i didn’t.”

“i wanted to kiss you that night.”

“yeah, me too.”

brian doesn’t say anything.

“do you wish i hadn’t kissed you last night?” you say.

“not at all.”

you let out a breath that fogs the windscreen in front of you. brian’s looking ahead again, but his hands are limp and not clutched around each other.

“there’s a problem with that, you know,” you say.

“nothing else has to happen. it was just a kiss. call it attention without intention.”

“there was intention.”

“there really can’t be.”

“because of your girlfriend.”

brian doesn’t say anything. he picks his hand up, as if with tremendous effort, and drops it next to yours. you walk your fingers over his palm.

“why does everything with you have to be so complicated,” you want to say, but you don’t.

xxx


End file.
